Network Load Balancing and Its Performance Measures
Shri Ram, Murti Smarak · 2015
Load balancing is a way to spread tasks out over multiple resources. By processing tasks and directing sessions on different servers, load balancing helps a network avoid annoying downtime and delivers optimal performance to users. There are virtual load balancing solutions that work in a manner similar to virtual applications or server environments. There are also physical load balancing hardware solutions that can be integrated with a network. The method used depends entirely upon the team implementing the solution and their particular needs. Network Load Balancing (NLB) is a clustering technology offered by Microsoft as part of all Server and Windows Server 2003 family operating. NLB uses a distributed algorithm to load balance network traffic across a number of hosts, helping to enhance the scalability and availability of mission critical, IP-based services, such as Web, virtual private networking, streaming media, terminal services, proxy and so on. It also provides high availability by detecting host failures and automatically redistributing traffic to operational hosts. This paper describes the detailed architecture of network load balancing, various types of addressing and the various performance measures.