Websockets with load balancing scalability

Question

I am using a load balancer with my website. The browser initiates a connection to the web server on my application server. Does an open connection consume any resources on LB or directly between the browser and the application server? If something open on LB is not a bottleneck? I mean, if my LB can handle X open connections, then user X + 1 could not even open the connection.

Answer 1

It depends!

The most effective balancing balancers listen for requests, do some analysis, then redirect requests; all bits do not go through the load balancer. Network forwarding occurs at a lower network level than http (for example, this is not an HTTP 302 redirect - the client never knows what happened while maintaining confidentiality in the internal network configuration - this happens with OSI Level 4, I think).

However, some load balancers add additional features, such as acting as SSL endpoints or using gzip compression. In these cases, they process the bits as they pass (encryption / decryption or compression in this case).

Image can help. Compare the first diagram with the second and third here , noting the redirection in the first, which is absent in others.