Load balancing (computing)

In computing, load balancing is the process of distributing a set

of tasks over a set of resources (computing units), with the aim of
making their overall processing more efficient. Load balancing
can optimize response time and avoid unevenly overloading some
compute nodes while other compute nodes are left idle.

Load balancing is the subject of research in the field of parallel

computers. Two main approaches exist: static algorithms, which
do not take into account the state of the different machines, and
dynamic algorithms, which are usually more general and more Diagram illustrating user requests to
efficient but require exchanges of information between the an Elasticsearch cluster being
distributed by a load balancer.
different computing units, at the risk of a loss of efficiency.
(Example for Wikipedia.)

Problem overview
A load-balancing algorithm always tries to answer a specific problem. Among other things, the nature of
the tasks, the algorithmic complexity, the hardware architecture on which the algorithms will run as well
as required error tolerance, must be taken into account. Therefore compromise must be found to best meet
application-specific requirements.

Nature of tasks
The efficiency of load balancing algorithms critically depends on the nature of the tasks. Therefore, the
more information about the tasks is available at the time of decision making, the greater the potential for
optimization.

Size of tasks
Perfect knowledge of the execution time of each of the tasks allows to reach an optimal load distribution
(see algorithm of prefix sum).[1] Unfortunately, this is in fact an idealized case. Knowing the exact
execution time of each task is an extremely rare situation.

For this reason, there are several techniques to get an idea of the different execution times. First of all, in
the fortunate scenario of having tasks of relatively homogeneous size, it is possible to consider that each
of them will require approximately the average execution time. If, on the other hand, the execution time is
very irregular, more sophisticated techniques must be used. One technique is to add some metadata to
each task. Depending on the previous execution time for similar metadata, it is possible to make
inferences for a future task based on statistics.[2]

Dependencies
In some cases, tasks depend on each other. These interdependencies can be illustrated by a directed
acyclic graph. Intuitively, some tasks cannot begin until others are completed.

Assuming that the required time for each of the tasks is known in advance, an optimal execution order
must lead to the minimization of the total execution time. Although this is an NP-hard problem and
therefore can be difficult to be solved exactly. There are algorithms, like job scheduler, that calculate
optimal task distributions using metaheuristic methods.

Segregation of tasks
Another feature of the tasks critical for the design of a load balancing algorithm is their ability to be
broken down into subtasks during execution. The "Tree-Shaped Computation" algorithm presented later
takes great advantage of this specificity.

Static and dynamic algorithms

Static
A load balancing algorithm is "static" when it does not take into account the state of the system for the
distribution of tasks. Thereby, the system state includes measures such as the load level (and sometimes
even overload) of certain processors. Instead, assumptions about the overall system are made beforehand,
such as the arrival times and resource requirements of incoming tasks. In addition, the number of
processors, their respective power and communication speeds are known. Therefore, static load balancing
aims to associate a known set of tasks with the available processors in order to minimize a certain
performance function. The trick lies in the concept of this performance function.

Static load balancing techniques are commonly centralized around a router, or Master, which distributes
the loads and optimizes the performance function. This minimization can take into account information
related to the tasks to be distributed, and derive an expected execution time.

The advantage of static algorithms is that they are easy to set up and extremely efficient in the case of
fairly regular tasks (such as processing HTTP requests from a website). However, there is still some
statistical variance in the assignment of tasks which can lead to the overloading of some computing units.

Dynamic
Unlike static load distribution algorithms, dynamic algorithms take into account the current load of each
of the computing units (also called nodes) in the system. In this approach, tasks can be moved
dynamically from an overloaded node to an underloaded node in order to receive faster processing. While
these algorithms are much more complicated to design, they can produce excellent results, in particular,
when the execution time varies greatly from one task to another.

Dynamic load balancing architecture can be more modular since it is not mandatory to have a specific
node dedicated to the distribution of work. When tasks are uniquely assigned to a processor according to
their state at a given moment, it is a unique assignment. If, on the other hand, the tasks can be
permanently redistributed according to the state of the system and its evolution, this is called dynamic
assignment.[3] Obviously, a load balancing algorithm that requires too much communication in order to
reach its decisions runs the risk of slowing down the resolution of the overall problem.

Hardware architecture

Heterogeneous machines
Parallel computing infrastructures are often composed of units of different computing power, which
should be taken into account for the load distribution.

For example, lower-powered units may receive requests that require a smaller amount of computation, or,
in the case of homogeneous or unknown request sizes, receive fewer requests than larger units.

Shared and distributed memory

Parallel computers are often divided into two broad categories: those where all processors share a single
common memory on which they read and write in parallel (PRAM model), and those where each
computing unit has its own memory (distributed memory model), and where information is exchanged by
messages.

For shared-memory computers, managing write conflicts greatly slows down the speed of individual
execution of each computing unit. However, they can work perfectly well in parallel. Conversely, in the
case of message exchange, each of the processors can work at full speed. On the other hand, when it
comes to collective message exchange, all processors are forced to wait for the slowest processors to start
the communication phase.

In reality, few systems fall into exactly one of the categories. In general, the processors each have an
internal memory to store the data needed for the next calculations and are organized in successive
clusters. Often, these processing elements are then coordinated through distributed memory and message
passing. Therefore, the load balancing algorithm should be uniquely adapted to a parallel architecture.
Otherwise, there is a risk that the efficiency of parallel problem solving will be greatly reduced.

Hierarchy
Adapting to the hardware structures seen above, there are two main categories of load balancing
algorithms. On the one hand, the one where tasks are assigned by “master” and executed by “workers”
who keep the master informed of the progress of their work, and the master can then take charge of
assigning or reassigning the workload in case of the dynamic algorithm. The literature refers to this as
"Master-Worker" architecture. On the other hand, the control can be distributed between the different
nodes. The load balancing algorithm is then executed on each of them and the responsibility for assigning
tasks (as well as re-assigning and splitting as appropriate) is shared. The last category assumes a dynamic
load balancing algorithm.

Since the design of each load balancing algorithm is unique, the previous distinction must be qualified.
Thus, it is also possible to have an intermediate strategy, with, for example, "master" nodes for each sub-
cluster, which are themselves subject to a global "master". There are also multi-level organizations, with
an alternation between master-slave and distributed control strategies. The latter strategies quickly
become complex and are rarely encountered. Designers prefer algorithms that are easier to control.

Adaptation to larger architectures (scalability)

In the context of algorithms that run over the very long term (servers, cloud...), the computer architecture
evolves over time. However, it is preferable not to have to design a new algorithm each time.

An extremely important parameter of a load balancing algorithm is therefore its ability to adapt to
scalable hardware architecture. This is called the scalability of the algorithm. An algorithm is called
scalable for an input parameter when its performance remains relatively independent of the size of that
parameter.

When the algorithm is capable of adapting to a varying number of computing units, but the number of
computing units must be fixed before execution, it is called moldable. If, on the other hand, the algorithm
is capable of dealing with a fluctuating amount of processors during its execution, the algorithm is said to
be malleable. Most load balancing algorithms are at least moldable.[4]

Fault tolerance
Especially in large-scale computing clusters, it is not tolerable to execute a parallel algorithm that cannot
withstand the failure of one single component. Therefore, fault tolerant algorithms are being developed
which can detect outages of processors and recover the computation.[5]

Approaches

Static distribution with full knowledge of the tasks: prefix sum

If the tasks are independent of each other, and if their respective execution time and the tasks can be
subdivided, there is a simple and optimal algorithm.

By dividing the tasks in such a way as to give the same amount of

computation to each processor, all that remains to be done is to
group the results together. Using a prefix sum algorithm, this
division can be calculated in logarithmic time with respect to the
number of processors.
Load balancing algorithm depending
If, however, the tasks cannot be subdivided (i.e., they are atomic), on divisibility of tasks
although optimizing task assignment is a difficult problem, it is
still possible to approximate a relatively fair distribution of tasks,
provided that the size of each of them is much smaller than the total computation performed by each of
the nodes.[1]
Most of the time, the execution time of a task is unknown and only rough approximations are available.
This algorithm, although particularly efficient, is not viable for these scenarios.

Static load distribution without prior knowledge

Even if the execution time is not known in advance at all, static load distribution is always possible.

Round-robin scheduling
In a round-robin algorithm, the first request is sent to the first server, then the next to the second, and so
on down to the last. Then it is started again, assigning the next request to the first server, and so on.

This algorithm can be weighted such that the most powerful units receive the largest number of requests
and receive them first.

Randomized static
Randomized static load balancing is simply a matter of randomly assigning tasks to the different servers.
This method works quite well. If, on the other hand, the number of tasks is known in advance, it is even
more efficient to calculate a random permutation in advance. This avoids communication costs for each
assignment. There is no longer a need for a distribution master because every processor knows what task
is assigned to it. Even if the number of tasks is unknown, it is still possible to avoid communication with
a pseudo-random assignment generation known to all processors.

The performance of this strategy (measured in total execution time for a given fixed set of tasks)
decreases with the maximum size of the tasks.

Others
Of course, there are other methods of assignment as well:

Less work: Assign more tasks to the servers by performing less (the method can also be
weighted).
Hash: allocates queries according to a hash table.
Power of Two Choices: pick two servers at random and choose the better of the two
options.[6][7]

Master-Worker Scheme
Master-Worker schemes are among the simplest dynamic load balancing algorithms. A master distributes
the workload to all workers (also sometimes referred to as "slaves"). Initially, all workers are idle and
report this to the master. The master answers worker requests and distributes the tasks to them. When he
has no more tasks to give, he informs the workers so that they stop asking for tasks.

The advantage of this system is that it distributes the burden very fairly. In fact, if one does not take into
account the time needed for the assignment, the execution time would be comparable to the prefix sum
seen above.
The problem with this algorithm is that it has difficulty adapting to a large number of processors because
of the high amount of necessary communications. This lack of scalability makes it quickly inoperable in
very large servers or very large parallel computers. The master acts as a bottleneck.

However, the quality of the algorithm can be greatly improved by

replacing the master with a task list that can be used by different
processors. Although this algorithm is a little more difficult to
implement, it promises much better scalability, although still
insufficient for very large computing centers.
Master-Worker and bottleneck

Non-hierarchical architecture, without

knowledge of the system: work stealing
Another technique to overcome scalability problems when the time needed for task completion is
unknown is work stealing.

The approach consists of assigning to each processor a certain number of tasks in a random or predefined
manner, then allowing inactive processors to "steal" work from active or overloaded processors. Several
implementations of this concept exist, defined by a task division model and by the rules determining the
exchange between processors. While this technique can be particularly effective, it is difficult to
implement because it is necessary to ensure that communication does not become the primary occupation
of the processors instead of solving the problem.

In the case of atomic tasks, two main strategies can be distinguished, those where the processors with low
load offer their computing capacity to those with the highest load, and those were the most loaded units
wish to lighten the workload assigned to them. It has been shown[8] that when the network is heavily
loaded, it is more efficient for the least loaded units to offer their availability and when the network is
lightly loaded, it is the overloaded processors that require support from the most inactive ones. This rule
of thumb limits the number of exchanged messages.

In the case where one starts from a single large task that cannot be divided beyond an atomic level, there
is a very efficient algorithm "Tree-Shaped computation",[9] where the parent task is distributed in a work
tree.

Principle
Initially, many processors have an empty task, except one that works sequentially on it. Idle processors
issue requests randomly to other processors (not necessarily active). If the latter is able to subdivide the
task it is working on, it does so by sending part of its work to the node making the request. Otherwise, it
returns an empty task. This induces a tree structure. It is then necessary to send a termination signal to the
parent processor when the subtask is completed so that it, in turn, sends the message to its parent until it
reaches the root of the tree. When the first processor, i.e. the root, has finished, a global termination
message can be broadcast. In the end, it is necessary to assemble the results by going back up the tree.

Efficiency
The efficiency of such an algorithm is close to the prefix sum when the job cutting and communication
time is not too high compared to the work to be done. To avoid too high communication costs, it is
possible to imagine a list of jobs on shared memory. Therefore, a request is simply reading from a certain
position on this shared memory at the request of the master processor.

Use cases
In addition to efficient problem solving through parallel computations, load balancing algorithms are
widely used in HTTP request management where a site with a large audience must be able to handle a
large number of requests per second.

Internet-based services
One of the most commonly used applications of load balancing is to provide a single Internet service
from multiple servers, sometimes known as a server farm. Commonly load-balanced systems include
popular web sites, large Internet Relay Chat networks, high-bandwidth File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites,
Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) servers, Domain Name System (DNS) servers, and databases.

Round-robin DNS
Round-robin DNS is an alternate method of load balancing that does not require a dedicated software or
hardware node. In this technique, multiple IP addresses are associated with a single domain name; clients
are given IP in a round-robin fashion. IP is assigned to clients with a short expiration so the client is more
likely to use a different IP the next time they access the Internet service being requested.

DNS delegation
Another more effective technique for load-balancing using DNS is to delegate www.example.org as a
sub-domain whose zone is served by each of the same servers that are serving the website. This technique
works particularly well where individual servers are spread geographically on the Internet. For example:

one.example.org A 192.0.2.1
two.example.org A 203.0.113.2
www.example.org NS one.example.org
www.example.org NS two.example.org

However, the zone file for www.example.org on each server is different such that each server
resolves its own IP Address as the A-record.[10] On server one the zone file for www.example.org
reports:

@ in a 192.0.2.1

On server two the same zone file contains:

@ in a 203.0.113.2

This way, when a server is down, its DNS will not respond and the web service does not receive any
traffic. If the line to one server is congested, the unreliability of DNS ensures less HTTP traffic reaches
that server. Furthermore, the quickest DNS response to the resolver is nearly always the one from the
network's closest server, ensuring geo-sensitive load-balancing . A short TTL on the A-record helps to
ensure traffic is quickly diverted when a server goes down. Consideration must be given to the possibility
that this technique may cause individual clients to switch between individual servers in mid-session.

Client-side random load balancing

Another approach to load balancing is to deliver a list of server IPs to the client, and then to have the
client randomly select the IP from the list on each connection.[11][12] This essentially relies on all clients
generating similar loads, and the Law of Large Numbers[12] to achieve a reasonably flat load distribution
across servers. It has been claimed that client-side random load balancing tends to provide better load
distribution than round-robin DNS; this has been attributed to caching issues with round-robin DNS, that
in the case of large DNS caching servers, tend to skew the distribution for round-robin DNS, while client-
side random selection remains unaffected regardless of DNS caching.[12]

With this approach, the method of delivery of a list of IPs to the client can vary and may be implemented
as a DNS list (delivered to all the clients without any round-robin), or via hardcoding it to the list. If a
"smart client" is used, detecting that a randomly selected server is down and connecting randomly again,
it also provides fault tolerance.

Server-side load balancers

For Internet services, a server-side load balancer is usually a software program that is listening on the port
where external clients connect to access services. The load balancer forwards requests to one of the
"backend" servers, which usually replies to the load balancer. This allows the load balancer to reply to the
client without the client ever knowing about the internal separation of functions. It also prevents clients
from contacting back-end servers directly, which may have security benefits by hiding the structure of the
internal network and preventing attacks on the kernel's network stack or unrelated services running on
other ports.

Some load balancers provide a mechanism for doing something special in the event that all backend
servers are unavailable. This might include forwarding to a backup load balancer or displaying a message
regarding the outage.

It is also important that the load balancer itself does not become a single point of failure. Usually, load
balancers are implemented in high-availability pairs which may also replicate session persistence data if
required by the specific application.[13] Certain applications are programmed with immunity to this
problem, by offsetting the load balancing point over differential sharing platforms beyond the defined
network. The sequential algorithms paired to these functions are defined by flexible parameters unique to
the specific database.[14]

Scheduling algorithms
Numerous scheduling algorithms, also called load-balancing methods, are used by load balancers to
determine which back-end server to send a request to. Simple algorithms include random choice, round
robin, or least connections.[15] More sophisticated load balancers may take additional factors into
account, such as a server's reported load, least response times, up/down status (determined by a
monitoring poll of some kind), a number of active connections, geographic location, capabilities, or how
much traffic it has recently been assigned.

Persistence
An important issue when operating a load-balanced service is how to handle information that must be
kept across the multiple requests in a user's session. If this information is stored locally on one backend
server, then subsequent requests going to different backend servers would not be able to find it. This
might be cached information that can be recomputed, in which case load-balancing a request to a different
backend server just introduces a performance issue.[15]

Ideally, the cluster of servers behind the load balancer should not be session-aware, so that if a client
connects to any backend server at any time the user experience is unaffected. This is usually achieved
with a shared database or an in-memory session database like Memcached.

One basic solution to the session data issue is to send all requests in a user session consistently to the
same backend server. This is known as "persistence" or "stickiness". A significant downside to this
technique is its lack of automatic failover: if a backend server goes down, its per-session information
becomes inaccessible, and any sessions depending on it are lost. The same problem is usually relevant to
central database servers; even if web servers are "stateless" and not "sticky", the central database is (see
below).

Assignment to a particular server might be based on a username, client IP address, or random. Because of
changes in the client's perceived address resulting from DHCP, network address translation, and web
proxies this method may be unreliable. Random assignments must be remembered by the load balancer,
which creates a burden on storage. If the load balancer is replaced or fails, this information may be lost,
and assignments may need to be deleted after a timeout period or during periods of high load to avoid
exceeding the space available for the assignment table. The random assignment method also requires that
clients maintain some state, which can be a problem, for example when a web browser has disabled the
storage of cookies. Sophisticated load balancers use multiple persistence techniques to avoid some of the
shortcomings of any one method.

Another solution is to keep the per-session data in a database. This is generally bad for performance
because it increases the load on the database: the database is best used to store information less transient
than per-session data. To prevent a database from becoming a single point of failure, and to improve
scalability, the database is often replicated across multiple machines, and load balancing is used to spread
the query load across those replicas. Microsoft's ASP.net State Server technology is an example of a
session database. All servers in a web farm store their session data on State Server and any server in the
farm can retrieve the data.

In the very common case where the client is a web browser, a simple but efficient approach is to store the
per-session data in the browser itself. One way to achieve this is to use a browser cookie, suitably time-
stamped and encrypted. Another is URL rewriting. Storing session data on the client is generally the
preferred solution: then the load balancer is free to pick any backend server to handle a request. However,
this method of state-data handling is poorly suited to some complex business logic scenarios, where
session state payload is big and recomputing it with every request on a server is not feasible. URL
rewriting has major security issues because the end-user can easily alter the submitted URL and thus
change session streams.

Yet another solution to storing persistent data is to associate a name with each block of data, and use a
distributed hash table to pseudo-randomly assign that name to one of the available servers, and then store
that block of data in the assigned server.

Load balancer features

Hardware and software load balancers may have a variety of special features. The fundamental feature of
a load balancer is to be able to distribute incoming requests over a number of backend servers in the
cluster according to a scheduling algorithm. Most of the following features are vendor specific:

Asymmetric load
A ratio can be manually assigned to cause some backend servers to get a greater share
of the workload than others. This is sometimes used as a crude way to account for some
servers having more capacity than others and may not always work as desired.
Priority activation
When the number of available servers drops below a certain number, or the load gets too
high, standby servers can be brought online.
TLS Offload and Acceleration
TLS (or its predecessor SSL) acceleration is a technique of offloading cryptographic
protocol calculations onto specialized hardware. Depending on the workload, processing
the encryption and authentication requirements of a TLS request can become a major part
of the demand on the Web Server's CPU; as the demand increases, users will see slower
response times, as the TLS overhead is distributed among Web servers. To remove this
demand on Web servers, a balancer can terminate TLS connections, passing HTTPS
requests as HTTP requests to the Web servers. If the balancer itself is not overloaded,
this does not noticeably degrade the performance perceived by end-users. The downside
of this approach is that all of the TLS processing is concentrated on a single device (the
balancer) which can become a new bottleneck. Some load balancer appliances include
specialized hardware to process TLS. Instead of upgrading the load balancer, which is
quite expensive dedicated hardware, it may be cheaper to forgo TLS offload and add a
few web servers. Also, some server vendors such as Oracle/Sun now incorporate
cryptographic acceleration hardware into their CPUs such as the T2000. F5 Networks
incorporates a dedicated TLS acceleration hardware card in their local traffic manager
(LTM) which is used for encrypting and decrypting TLS traffic. One clear benefit to TLS
offloading in the balancer is that it enables it to do balancing or content switching based
on data in the HTTPS request.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack protection
Load balancers can provide features such as SYN cookies and delayed-binding (the back-
end servers don't see the client until it finishes its TCP handshake) to mitigate SYN flood
attacks and generally offload work from the servers to a more efficient platform.
HTTP compression
HTTP compression reduces the amount of data to be transferred for HTTP objects by
utilising gzip compression available in all modern web browsers. The larger the response
and the further away the client is, the more this feature can improve response times. The
trade-off is that this feature puts additional CPU demand on the load balancer and could
be done by web servers instead.
TCP offload
Different vendors use different terms for this, but the idea is that normally each HTTP
request from each client is a different TCP connection. This feature utilises HTTP/1.1 to
 consolidate multiple HTTP requests from multiple clients into a single TCP socket to the
back-end servers.
TCP buffering
The load balancer can buffer responses from the server and spoon-feed the data out to
slow clients, allowing the webserver to free a thread for other tasks faster than it would if it
had to send the entire request to the client directly.
Direct Server Return
An option for asymmetrical load distribution, where request and reply have different
network paths.
Health checking
The balancer polls servers for application layer health and removes failed servers from the
pool.
HTTP caching
The balancer stores static content so that some requests can be handled without
contacting the servers.
Content filtering
Some balancers can arbitrarily modify traffic on the way through.
HTTP security
Some balancers can hide HTTP error pages, remove server identification headers from
HTTP responses, and encrypt cookies so that end users cannot manipulate them.
Priority queuing
Also known as rate shaping, the ability to give different priorities to different traffic.
Content-aware switching
Most load balancers can send requests to different servers based on the URL being
requested, assuming the request is not encrypted (HTTP) or if it is encrypted (via HTTPS)
that the HTTPS request is terminated (decrypted) at the load balancer.
Client authentication
Authenticate users against a variety of authentication sources before allowing them
access to a website.
Programmatic traffic manipulation
At least one balancer allows the use of a scripting language to allow custom balancing
methods, arbitrary traffic manipulations, and more.
Firewall
Firewalls can prevent direct connections to backend servers, for network security reasons.
Intrusion prevention system
Intrusion prevention systems offer application layer security in addition to the
network/transport layer offered by firewall security.

Telecommunications
Load balancing can be useful in applications with redundant communications links. For example, a
company may have multiple Internet connections ensuring network access if one of the connections fails.
A failover arrangement would mean that one link is designated for normal use, while the second link is
used only if the primary link fails.

Using load balancing, both links can be in use all the time. A device or program monitors the availability
of all links and selects the path for sending packets. The use of multiple links simultaneously increases
the available bandwidth.

Shortest Path Bridging

TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) facilitates an Ethernet to have an arbitrary
topology, and enables per flow pair-wise load splitting by way of Dijkstra's algorithm, without
configuration and user intervention. The catalyst for TRILL was an event at Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center which began on 13 November 2002.[16][17] The concept of Rbridges[18] [sic] was first
proposed to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in the year 2004,[19] whom in 2005[20]
rejected what came to be known as TRILL, and in the years 2006 through 2012[21] devised an
incompatible variation known as Shortest Path Bridging.

The IEEE approved the IEEE 802.1aq standard in May 2012,[22] also known as Shortest Path Bridging
(SPB). SPB allows all links to be active through multiple equal-cost paths, provides faster convergence
times to reduce downtime, and simplifies the use of load balancing in mesh network topologies (partially
connected and/or fully connected) by allowing traffic to load share across all paths of a network.[23][24]
SPB is designed to virtually eliminate human error during configuration and preserves the plug-and-play
nature that established Ethernet as the de facto protocol at Layer 2.[25]

Routing 1
Many telecommunications companies have multiple routes through their networks or to external
networks. They use sophisticated load balancing to shift traffic from one path to another to avoid network
congestion on any particular link, and sometimes to minimize the cost of transit across external networks
or improve network reliability.

Another way of using load balancing is in network monitoring activities. Load balancers can be used to
split huge data flows into several sub-flows and use several network analyzers, each reading a part of the
original data. This is very useful for monitoring fast networks like 10GbE or STM64, where complex
processing of the data may not be possible at wire speed.[26]

Data center networks

Load balancing is widely used in data center networks to distribute traffic across many existing paths
between any two servers.[27] It allows more efficient use of network bandwidth and reduces provisioning
costs. In general, load balancing in datacenter networks can be classified as either static or dynamic.

Static load balancing distributes traffic by computing a hash of the source and destination addresses and
port numbers of traffic flows and using it to determine how flows are assigned to one of the existing
paths. Dynamic load balancing assigns traffic flows to paths by monitoring bandwidth use on different
paths. Dynamic assignments can also be proactive or reactive. In the former case, the assignment is fixed
once made, while in the latter the network logic keeps monitoring available paths and shifts flows across
them as network utilization changes (with arrival of new flows or completion of existing ones). A
comprehensive overview of load balancing in datacenter networks has been made available.[27]

Failovers
Load balancing is often used to implement failover—the continuation of service after the failure of one or
more of its components. The components are monitored continually (e.g., web servers may be monitored
by fetching known pages), and when one becomes unresponsive, the load balancer is informed and no
longer sends traffic to it. When a component comes back online, the load balancer starts rerouting traffic
to it. For this to work, there must be at least one component in excess of the service's capacity (N+1
redundancy). This can be much less expensive and more flexible than failover approaches where every
single live component is paired with a single backup component that takes over in the event of a failure
(dual modular redundancy). Some RAID systems can also utilize hot spare for a similar effect.[28]

Data Ingestion for AI Model Training

Increasingly, load balancing techniques are being used to manage high-volume data ingestion pipelines
that feed artificial intelligence training and inference systems—sometimes referred to as “AI factories.”
These AI-driven environments require continuous processing of vast amounts of structured and
unstructured data, placing heavy demands on networking, storage, and computational resources.[29] To
maintain the necessary high throughput and low latency, organizations commonly deploy load balancing
tools capable of advanced TCP optimizations, connection pooling, and adaptive scheduling. Such features
help distribute incoming data requests evenly across servers or nodes, prevent congestion, and ensure that
compute resources remain efficiently utilized.[30]

When deployed in large-scale or high-performance AI environments, load balancers also mitigate

bandwidth constraints and accommodate varying data governance requirements—particularly when
sensitive training data cannot be sent to third-party cloud services. By routing data locally (on-premises)
or across private clouds, load balancers allow AI workflows to avoid public-cloud bandwidth limits,
reduce transit costs, and maintain compliance with regulatory standards. As AI models expand in size
(often measured by billions or even trillions of parameters), load balancing for data ingestion has grown
in importance for maintaining the reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency of AI factories.

See also
Affinity mask
Application Delivery Controller
Autoscaling
Cloud computing
Cloud load balancing
Common Address Redundancy Protocol
Edge computing
InterPlanetary File System
Network Load Balancing
SRV record

References
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External links
Server routing for load balancing with full auto failure recovery (http://www.udaparts.com/do
cument/articles/snpisec.htm)

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