Definition: 

WAN Load Balancing

A method of evenly distributing user traffic across a WAN (Wide Area Network) in order to improve the availability and overall performance. Commonly utilized by companies to provide the efficient delivery of business-critical applications and information to users in both local and remote offices around the world.

When a company implements a Wide Area Network load balancing solution as a part of its IT infrastructure, it can have the ability to take full advantage of server resources by distributing incoming traffic appropriately and evenly. By performing this traffic management function in an efficient manner, load balancing will help an organization’s WAN avoid potential performance problems such as traffic bottlenecks and server crashes that can slow or halt operation completely. This solution can also help guard against potentially harmful traffic that preys on the vulnerabilities of slow networks by launching worms, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and other malicious activities. By prioritizing the consumption and application of bandwidth within a business’s WAN, load balancing can make the most out of available bandwidth resources to improve the application delivery and functionality. With the even distribution of traffic, proactive security measures and bandwidth prioritization methods, load balancing is an optimal way to provide a scalable performance solution to any far-reaching business network.