CompTIA Network+ Practice Test

What is the primary function of a load balancer?

1. To provide encryption and decryption for data

2. To route network traffic to a specific server

3. To balance the load between two or more servers

4. To cache information for faster access

The correct answer is: To balance the load between two or more servers

The primary function of a load balancer is to balance the load between two or more servers. This is achieved by distributing incoming network traffic across multiple servers, which helps ensure that no single server becomes overwhelmed with too much traffic. This distribution enhances the overall performance, reliability, and availability of applications and services by optimizing resource use, improving response times, and providing redundancy in case one of the servers fails. The load balancer can make real-time decisions based on various algorithms (like round-robin, least connections, or IP hash) to decide which server should handle a particular request. This way, it helps in maintaining high availability and scalability by efficiently managing the server workloads. While other choices may describe functions that some devices or systems can perform, they do not represent the primary function of a load balancer. For example, routing network traffic to a specific server is part of how load balancers operate, but it does not encompass the broader goal of load balancing across multiple servers. Similarly, providing encryption and decryption for data and caching information for faster access are functions associated with different types of networking solutions, not specifically with load balancers.