Load Balancing is the process of distributing network or application traffic across multiple servers to ensure reliability and performance. It prevents any single server from becoming a bottleneck or point of failure by spreading the load evenly. Load balancers can operate at different layers of the network stack, such as the transport layer (Layer 4) or the application layer (Layer 7). They improve the availability, responsiveness, and capacity of applications by managing incoming traffic and directing it to the best-performing servers. Load balancing is essential for maintaining high availability and performance in distributed systems, ensuring that applications can handle large volumes of traffic efficiently.