load-balancing-patternslisted

# Load Balancing Patterns Distribute traffic across infrastructure using the appropriate load balancing approach, from simple round-robin to global multi-region failover. ## When to Use This Skill Use load-balancing-patterns when: - Distributing traffic across multiple application servers - Implementing high availability and failover - Routing traffic based on URLs, headers, or geographic location - Managing session persistence across stateless backends - Deploying applications to Kubernetes clusters - Configuring global traffic management across regions - Implementing zero-downtime deployments (blue-green, canary) - Selecting between cloud-managed and self-managed load balancers ## Core Load Balancing Concepts ### Layer 4 vs Layer 7 **Layer 4 (L4) - Transport Layer:** - Routes based on IP address and port (TCP/UDP packets) - No application data inspection, lower latency, higher throughput - Protocol agnostic, preserves client IP addresses - Use for: Database connections, video streaming, gaming, financial transactions, non-HTTP protocols **Layer 7 (L7) - Application Layer:** - Routes based on HTTP URLs, headers, cookies, request body - Full application data visibility, SSL/TLS termination, caching, WAF integration - Content-based routing capabilities - Use for: Web applications, REST APIs, microservices, GraphQL endpoints, complex routing logic For detailed comparison including performance benchmarks and hybrid approaches, see `references/l4-vs-l7-comparison.md`. ##