Load balancing, or load distribution, refers to the balanced distribution of workload or load across multiple resources, servers, or devices. The goal of load balancing is to use the available resources efficiently, improve performance, enhance reliability, and distribute the load evenly.

In load balancing, the workload is distributed based on certain algorithms, parameters, or settings. It can be applied in various contexts, such as computer networks, server farms, cloud environments, websites, applications, and other systems where multiple resources are available to process tasks or requests.

A load balancing system receives incoming requests or workload and distributes them across the available resources in a balanced manner. This ensures that no single resource becomes overloaded while other resources remain underutilized. It distributes the traffic based on various criteria, such as server capacity, responsiveness, current workload, geographical location, or other parameters.

Load balancing offers several advantages, including:

1. Improved performance: By distributing the load proportionally, the total processing time and queues can be reduced, resulting in faster response times and better performance for users.

2. Better scalability: Load balancing enables the easy addition of extra resources and the ability to scale capacity as demand increases, allowing the handling of growing workloads without significant disruptions.

3. Higher availability: By distributing traffic across multiple resources, load balancing can help reduce the risk of failure. If a particular resource or server is unavailable, traffic can be redirected to other working resources, thereby increasing availability.

4. Efficient use of resources: Load balancing ensures that available resources are used efficiently, preventing overloading of certain resources and optimizing the overall system capacity.

Overall, load balancing contributes to improving the performance, reliability, and scalability of systems by evenly distributing the workload across available resources. It is an essential technique in modern computer networks and server environments.