--- title: What Is a Load Balancer? | daily.dev description: Load balancers distribute incoming traffic across multiple backend servers to improve availability, performance, and scalability. They work by accepting... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/what-is-a-load-balancer--hpaid5n1e twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: What Is a Load Balancer? | daily.dev og:description: Load balancers distribute incoming traffic across multiple backend servers to improve availability, performance, and scalability. They work by accepting... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/what-is-a-load-balancer--hpaid5n1e og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/HPaId5N1e.png og:image:alt: What Is a Load Balancer? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # What Is a Load Balancer? **[Isovalent](https://daily.dev/sources/isovalent)** · 10 min read · 3 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Load balancers distribute incoming traffic across multiple backend servers to improve availability, performance, and scalability. They work by accepting requests at a single entry point, selecting healthy backends using algorithms like round robin or least connections, and forwarding traffic accordingly. Load balancers operate at Layer 4 (transport) or Layer 7 (application), can be hardware or software-based, and are essential for cloud-native environments. Modern solutions like Isovalent Load Balancer use eBPF and Envoy to provide consistent load balancing across Kubernetes, VMs, and on-premises infrastructure with enterprise controls. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: --- Tags: [#envoy](https://daily.dev/tags/envoy), [#kubernetes](https://daily.dev/tags/kubernetes), [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#networking](https://daily.dev/tags/networking) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/what-is-a-load-balancer--hpaid5n1e) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"What Is a Load Balancer?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-is-a-load-balancer--hpaid5n1e","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-is-a-load-balancer--hpaid5n1e"},"datePublished":"2026-02-10T12:52:13.925Z","dateModified":"2026-03-15T03:51:11.254Z","description":"Load balancers distribute incoming traffic across multiple backend servers to improve availability, performance, and scalability. They work by accepting...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/9e8efd2bef22e876475df0c702bb70a2?_a=AQAEunF","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/9e8efd2bef22e876475df0c702bb70a2?_a=AQAEunF","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Isovalent","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Isovalent","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--aJv8XyPY--/f_auto/v1716188539/logos/isovalent","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/isovalent"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-is-a-load-balancer--hpaid5n1e","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":3},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"envoy,kubernetes,linux,networking","timeRequired":"PT10M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Isovalent","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/isovalent"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"What Is a Load Balancer?"}]} ```