When talking about Web Accessibility; Load Balancer will be mentioned.
So let's dive into the definition, why it is important in the first place, and what problem it addresses.
So for best understanding let's start with the problem we encounter when we do not have any load balancer in place for our app and this will also give us the why behind it.
Problem:
The website loads slowly due to the traffic that is receiving, the service is down due to traffic and requests, and the server is overloaded and is down.
All those cases happen because we do not have a load balancer in place. So let's jump into the why:
Why do we use it?
To not overwork a server and consecutively shout down and not be able to reach our service.
Instead, distribute those requests to more servers.
How does it solve the problem?
It strains on each server and makes the servers more efficient, speeding up performance and reducing latency.
Definition
A device that acts as a reverse proxy and distributes network or application traffic across a number of servers. It helps scale horizontally across an ever-increasing number of servers.
So in other words: it distributes several workloads across multiple servers to ensure consistent and optimal resource utilisation.
Examples of Load Balancers:
Many services like AWS already have them in place, for example, the EC2 instance has a load balancer in place:
Also, NGINX, Google Cloud Load Balancing, and Microsoft Azure instances -> Microsoft Azure Load Balancer
An easy way to explain would be through this graphic that shows from a high level how it is being distributed when several users are requesting a resource on the web:
So the user will get redirected to the resource whether some conditions are met.
A simple way of displaying how a Load Balancer functions.
Hope it helps 🤗