Load balancing is the process of distributing incoming network traffic or application requests across multiple servers or resources to ensure optimal performance, reliability, and availability. The primary purpose of load balancing is to prevent any single server from becoming overwhelmed, which could lead to slow response times, server crashes, or downtime. By evenly distributing the workload, load balancing ensures that each server operates within its capacity, resulting in a more efficient and stable system. Load balancers can be hardware-based or software-based and use various algorithms, such as round-robin, least connections, or IP hashing, to determine how traffic is distributed.

Load balancing is essential for high-traffic websites, cloud services, and applications that require high availability and scalability. It also plays a crucial role in disaster recovery by rerouting traffic to healthy servers in case of failures. In modern cloud environments, load balancers are often integrated with auto-scaling mechanisms, allowing resources to be dynamically added or removed based on current demand, further enhancing the system's flexibility and resilience.