ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity (CC)Network SecurityHard
A large enterprise is designing its network architecture to ensure high availability and efficient distribution of network traffic across multiple servers for a critical application. Which network device is primarily responsible for performing this function?
- ALoad Balancer
- BSwitch
- CFirewall
- DRouter
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: A. Load Balancer
A load balancer is specifically designed to distribute incoming network traffic across a group of backend servers or server pools. This ensures that no single server is overloaded, improving application responsiveness, availability, and reliability.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. A switch connects devices within a local network and forwards frames based on MAC addresses, not for distributing application traffic across servers.
- C. A firewall filters network traffic based on security rules and does not perform traffic distribution for high availability.
- D. A router connects different networks and forwards packets between them, but does not distribute traffic among multiple servers for a single application.
Load Balancer
A device or software that distributes network traffic efficiently across multiple servers to improve responsiveness, availability, and reliability of applications.
- Distributes traffic across a 'farm' of servers.
- Enhances application performance and prevents server overload.
- Provides high availability by redirecting traffic from failed servers.
Memory trick: The Load Balancer is the 'traffic cop' for server farms.