FPGA-based load balancer for Internet servers

Abstract

Server load balancing refers to the concept of having multiple parallel servers offering the same service to clients on the Internet, in order to enhance the reliability and performance of the service. To coordinate the operation of the multiple servers, a load balancer is needed. We have implemented a Network Address Translation (NAT) Load Balancer in hardware using a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The preliminary results show that the NAT Load Balancer on the FPGA is able to handle gigabit per second speeds.