Top 6 Load Balancing Algorithms

• Static Algorithms

  • Round robin

    The client requests are sent to different service instances in sequential order. The services are usually required to be stateless.

  • Sticky round-robin

    This is an improvement of the round-robin algorithm. If Alice’s first request goes to service A, the following requests go to service A as well.

  • Weighted round-robin

    The admin can specify the weight for each service. The ones with a higher weight handle more requests than others.

  • Hash

    This algorithm applies a hash function on the incoming requests’ IP or URL. The requests are routed to relevant instances based on the hash function result.

• Dynamic Algorithms

  • Least connections

    A new request is sent to the service instance with the least concurrent connections.

  • Least response time

    A new request is sent to the service instance with the fastest response time.