Load Balancing: The Matrix (opens in new tab)

The Quest Begins (The "Why") Honestly, I was just trying to keep my tiny side‑project from melting down during a launch‑day traffic spike. I’d thrown together a simple round‑robin proxy, watched the logs fill with 502s, and felt like Neo staring at a wall of green code—confused and a little overwhelmed. The problem wasn’t that we didn’t have enough servers; it was that the traffic wasn’t being spread fairly. Some nodes got hammered while others twiddled their thumbs, and the whole thing start...