infrastructure/what-is-a-load-balancer-one-web-address-many-servers.md

What is a load balancer? One web address, many servers

Infrastructure · 5 min read ·

When you open a popular website you type one address, yet many servers stand behind it. Something has to decide which one answers you. That something is a load balancer.

Play the part yourself: send requests, switch servers off, and compare strategies like round robin and least connections. Then read the few lines of Python that do the same job.

Diagram: one request enters a load balancer, which fans out to three servers

$ ls infrastructure/

see all →