Question

Is load balancers decrease bandwidth speed?

Posted on February 28, 2017
Load Balancing
Asked by chandranakka

I’m planned to use load balancer to my droplets.

But, I’m concern about bandwidth speed.

If I have two droplets with 50Mbps speed (for each droplet). I can serve content to 100 visitors with 1Mbps speed at the same time.

When I’m using Load Balancer (if load balancer is also have same speed 50 Mbps limit) I can serve content to 100 visitors with 500Kbps speed at the same time.

Is it right? Also, Is DigitalOcean set any bandwidth speed limits on load balancer?

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Jonathan Tittle • February 28, 2017

Accepted Answer

@chandranakka

Using a Load Balancer won’t cut download speeds, it simply balances incoming requests and directs them to a server in your configured cluster. If you’re using DigitalOcean’s Load Balancer service, you would choose either Round Robin or Least Connections when setting up the LB, which is what will determine how visitors are directed to the Droplets you’ve attached.

Round Robin configuration means that visitors will be directed to the first available server in the mix. As long as that first server is deemed active, it’ll be the one to serve incoming requests. Should that server go down, Round Robin connects to the next active server that’s available to handle requests.

Least Connections works a little different in that it keeps track of which server has the most activity as well as the least activity. The least active server that’s configured will be the one to receive the next request. For example, if you have 2 Droplets and one has 100 connections while another has 50, the one with 50 will serve the next request and so forth and so on.

You’re not dividing bandwidth or download capabilities by using a LB, you’re simply balancing the load of incoming requests by directing them to multiple servers instead of a single.