Load Balancing Router
Network Load Balancers
Load Balancing Router | What is it and Do You Need it?
The most common type of load balancing router usually consists of two WAN ports that can be connected to two ISP lines to provide additional bandwidth.
Typical routers only have one uplink/WAN port, and can only direct traffic through one ISP connection. In the event that the ISP connection goes down, there is no way that the computers behind the router NAT is able to perform packet operations since the only data path has been already blocked.
A load balancing router, however, can route traffic through the other ISP connection via the other WAN port without disrupting network operations. Users might experience a reduction in download/upload speed for a short period of time before the failing ISP connection is restored, but comparing to aborting network operations due to a single point of failure, a reduction in network speed is a much better alternative.
Thanks to the network failover feature of the load balancing router, high availability can be achieved on the network side of a communication system. The failover functionality of this kind of load balancing hardware is hard to be imitated by that of software, and unnecessary either.
The best places to deploy load balancing routers would be small to medium businesses where the budget is low and a steady outbound internet connection is important. These businesses usually have a small network with several dozens of computers forming an internal LAN, and there are only a single digit number of network segmentations if they have any. A failover router is the best solution in this circumstance and provides the best ROI for business owners.
Another wide usage of a load balancing router is for households with access to more than one ISPs and want to double the bandwidth. Even though it’s kind of an overkill for most families, knowing that you have a internet connection that almost wouldn’t go down is still a great feeling.
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