What Is a Load Balancer?
A load balancer distributes incoming network requests across multiple backend servers, so no single server is overwhelmed and the overall system can handle m...
Published October 9, 2026
A load balancer distributes incoming network requests across multiple backend servers, so no single server is overwhelmed and the overall system can handle more traffic.
Why it exists
- A single server has a hard limit on how many requests it can handle at once
- Running multiple identical servers and distributing traffic across them lets a system scale far past what one server could handle alone, and keeps working if one server fails
How to apply it
- Common strategies include round-robin (cycling evenly through servers) and least-connections (sending traffic to whichever server is currently least busy)
- A load balancer also typically performs health checks, automatically routing traffic away from servers that stop responding correctly
FAQ
Does a load balancer add a single point of failure?
It can, if only one load balancer instance exists — production setups typically run redundant load balancers to avoid this exact problem.