Having a single web server to respond to the requests for a newly created website is enough, however, if the website becomes popular, keeping a single server might create issues and would not be a good idea. Basically, if you keep only one web server for responding to all the incoming HTTP requests for your popular website, it will not be able to handle the high volumes of incoming traffic. It will result in loading the web pages slowly as some visitors may have to hold-on until your web server is free to process further requests. Upgrading the server hardware will not prove to be a cost effective solution in case the traffic and number of connections to your website keep increasing constantly.

So to achieve a greater web server scalability, multiple web servers are required to be added in order to distribute the server load (ie. HTTP requests) among other servers in the group. The process of adding multiple servers to form a group is also known as “Server Cluster”. The sharing of load among multiple servers in a group is known as Server Load Balancing. Basically, the server load balancing applies to almost all kind of servers (ie. database server, application server, etc…), however here in this article, we will be devoting attention to the HTTP server only.

IP Spraying – A Load Balancing Mechanism

When multiple web servers are added in a group of servers, the HTTP requests coming to the website is required to be shared equally among the servers. In order to do this all the servers must look as a single web server to the web client. The IP spraying is a load balancing mechanism, which is basically utilized to distribute the HTTP requests (ie. server load). The basic equipment that is used for IP spraying in order to balance the server load among other servers can also be called as Network Dispatcher, Load Balancer, or you may call as a Load Dispatcher. Then the IP sprayer intercepts the HTTP requests and equally redirects them to the other servers in the server cluster. However, depending on the kind of IP sprayer engaged, the architecture may offer you a greater scalability, load balancing and better fail-over solution.