Network Load Balanced Dedicated servers can be setup on both the platforms i.e. Windows and Linux. Network load balancing is also termed as Clustered Server Hosting. This was included in the Windows Server OS enabled with TCP/IP services such as Virtual Media Networking, Web Services, Streaming Media and Terminal Services.
Hardware support is not required, the traffic is re-distributed to hosts. It offers a control and upgrade from Windows NT 4.0. This technique is popular due to its ability to offer high performance and its unique fail-over protection as compared to other load balanced servers.
There are many advantages of Load Balanced Servers.
a) Network load balanced servers offer an improved reliability of servers and has the capability to detect failure. It can distribute the traffic to different servers in the cluster depending their loads
b) Network load balanced servers are better than Round Robin Solutions
c) It has a centralized access to the servers in the cluster.
d) Network load balanced servers are offer scalability, with this it means, if you realize an increase in the traffic load, you can anytime add servers to the cluster.
e) The traffic can get distributed based on the customers request.
f) With this technology web hosting providers can offer 100% uptime to their customers.
g) It is much cheaper than the Hardware load balancing option.