Linux - NetworkingThis forum is for any issue related to networks or networking.
Routing, network cards, OSI, etc. Anything is fair game.
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a load balancer application is used for 2+ network connections. It will share the traffic across multiple links. allowing more traffic to the machine.
that's an impressively narrow view of a very generic term... tsk...
a load balancer essentially balances a load between various resources. now this *could* be internet connections as above, but that's actually a pretty rare use of a load balancer. the most common incarnation is to direct requests for data, such as web traffic, to destination servers. a standard internet facing architecture, such as google, ebay etc... will use them to spread connections coming from your browser and thousands, millions, like it to servers behind it. it'll normally take account of what kind of request is made, and keep a track of how busy each server it's aware of sitting behind it appears to be.
I was giving a general view. But if you really want to get specific the most common usage is not for machines in general but for network links. It is used in routed links for redunancy and load balancing. as far as the individual server go "Teaming" or "Port Channeling" is mostly what is used. Google uses a little different method because they use regional servers which trace your ip address back to a physical location then direct you to the closest location.
as above, not the main use by any means. someone like google will use a first line of load balancing based on DNS, but even then they do not have the french server, the german server... each public ip address dns resolves to will be backed by hundreds of servers, which are load balanced against irrespective of the geographical location.
etherchannel connections do load balancing of course, but the question is "what is a load balancer" and use of 802.3ad link aggregation doesn't correctly fit that question, when it's assumed that here a "load balancer" is assumed to be a black box doing a given task.
Last edited by acid_kewpie; 05-29-2007 at 02:02 AM.
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