The Basics of Internet Load Balancing

For the great majority of people the world over, the internet reigns supreme in our lives. We are becoming increasingly dependent on the internet and staying connected for the large part of day has become the norm. With the number of online businesses increasing daily and more people opting to work from home, the need for a reliable internet connection is at an all time high.

Staying connected and avoiding downtime has become crucial because downtime causes huge financial losses to businesses and individuals. In this article we introduce the concept, importance and benefits of load balancing for the internet.

Let us begin with a clear understanding of what internet load balancing really means. Computer networks route billions of data packets literally every second. For this data to be routed efficiently, networks need to operate at optimum efficiency. Enter load balancing as the ideal solution to helping networks operate more efficiently. Through the even distribution of the processing and traffic across the network, the technology ensures that one single medium is not over taxed.

Internet web servers use load distribution technology to help in the even distribution of traffic across numerous servers. What this achieves is a more efficient use of the available bandwidth. There is increased efficiency resulting in faster access to the many websites hosted by the web servers.

Internet load balancing is done in one of two ways: inbound and outbound. Let us examine each type individually to better understand how they function. Inbound balancing supports multiple servers but to all external appearances shows up as only one system. Load balancing for inbound traffic uses dynamic DNS through one of two ways. It can either be incorporated into the system or provided through an external service. The benefit to having it built into the system is cost savings and better control.

Balancing for inbound traffic processes traffic from remote users. Through the use of multiple servers it helps to increase bandwidth, providing better connectivity and low downtime. This method helps enhance the efficiency of the information retrieval process.

Outbound balancing technology specifically helps to process distribution of traffic in an even and efficient manner over the network. This helps to meet the objectives of connectivity and high speed performance for global users.

Load distribution for outbound traffic offers several benefits including practically uninterrupted connectivity, enhanced bandwidth efficiency and the ability to make use of diverse internet technologies. Additionally, it is possible to implement flexible load balancing options.


To summarize, the even distribution of processing and communication activities across the network to minimize one server being overloaded is the primary aim of internet load balancing. This alternative approach helps to improve the performance of busy websites by the quite simple process of increasing the web servers in use. When traffic is evenly distributed across a cluster of back end servers, the efficiency of the site is improved tremendously.