Canadian Journal of Pure & Applied Sciences

Abstract: In this study, a TCP server load balancer (SLB) programmed in Java is proposed as an affordable alternative to commercial or open source server load balancers for small companies by having all basic server load balancer features in order to maximize the usage of small companies financial, human and hardware resources. The features include load balancing algorithms namely Round Robin, Random, Least Connection and Hash IP Address. The Java TCP Server Load Balancer employs Rules which consist of the service, Virtual IP Address model, load balancing algorithm, and keep-alive. The Java TCP Server Load Balancer features are real server Health Checking and Graphical User Interface (GUI) for ease of configuration and administration. Subsequently the algorithms included in the balancer are studied and analyzed to compare their performance in the Linux Operating System environment with network traffic on different applications in order to find the most optimal use of the load balancing algorithms in the Java TCP Server Load Balancer. Analysis and comparison of the load balancing algorithms are conducted in experiments involving a number of test cases with clients, the Java Server Load Balancer, and real servers hosting HTTP and FTP applications. The most important conclusion from the experiments is that the performance of the two services tested namely HTTP and FTP is not actually directly influenced by the load balancing algorithm.