Todays network is under higher demand than ever before, each day handling ever growing and more complex business and Web applications. A single server will not be able to handle the load demand required; multiple servers are needed and must be used to meet the demand. For ease of use, a single IP address or domain name must be used; however, if several servers are required, this adds complexity. Using a load balancer can ease the complexity of the network setup. With the continued development of web applications, virtualization, cloud computing and more, a load balancer has become an integral piece of networking equipment. With the use of a load balancer, a single service can be provided from multiple servers. A load balancer runs on Layers 4 through 7 of the OSI Model, and some of the common protocols that are usually load balanced are HTTP, IRC, FTP, NNTP and DNS. When in use, a load balancer is placed in front of a server farm on the network. The load balancer listens on the needed port, and when a request comes in for the service, the load balancer will forward the request to one of the available servers. When the back-end server receives the request from the load balancer, it will respond to the load balancer. In turn, the load balancer will respond to the client that made the initial request. This makes the load balancer an invisible piece of networking equipment to the client. Load balancers are aware of the requested protocol and will forward the connection to the …

admin Networking BalancersBreakingPoint, load, server, systems, test