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 efficiently use the available resources, improve performance, increase reliability, and evenly distribute the load.

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 handle tasks or requests.

A load balancing system receives incoming requests or workloads and distributes them across the available resources in a balanced way. This ensures that no single resource becomes overloaded while others 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 benefits, 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 allows for the easy addition of extra resources and scaling of capacity as demand increases, enabling the ability to meet growing workloads without significant disruptions.

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

4. Efficient resource use: Load balancing ensures that the available resources are used efficiently, preventing the overload 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.