Other JBoss services, in particular the HTTP web services, do not require the client to download anything. The client (e.g., a web browser) sends in requests and receives responses directly over the wire according to certain communication protocols (e.g., the HTTP protocol). In this case, a load balancer is required to process all requests and dispatch them to server nodes in the cluster. The load balancer is typically part of the cluster. It understands the cluster configuration as well as failover policies. The client only needs to know about the load balancer. The load balancer clustering architecture is illustrated in Figure 1.3, “The load balancer architecture for clustering”.

A potential problem with the load balancer solution is that the load balancer itself is a single point of failure. It needs to be monitored closely to ensure high availability of the entire cluster services.