For most Information Technology (IT) departments, Internet servers must support applications and services that run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, such as financial transactions, database access, and corporate intranets. In addition, network applications and servers need the ability to scale performance to handle large volumes of client requests without creating unwanted delays.

Network Load Balancing clusters enable you to manage a group of independent servers as a single system for greater scalability, increased availability, and easier manageability. You can use Network Load Balancing to implement enterprise-wide scalable solutions for the delivery of Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) based services and applications.

Network Load Balancing has many advantages over other load balancing solutions that can introduce single points of failure or performance bottlenecks. Because there are no special hardware requirements for Network Load Balancing, you can use any industry standard compatible computer in a Network Load Balancing cluster.

Network Load Balancing works by distributing client requests across a set of servers. It is particularly useful for ensuring that stateless applications, such as Web pages from a server running Internet Information Services (IIS), are highly available and can be scaled out by adding additional servers as the load increases. The ease with which Network Load Balancing allows you to replace a malfunctioning server or add a new server provides scalability.