What Is Load Balancing? How Traffic Distribution Works

Load balancing distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers or compute instances. The goal is simple: no single machine gets overwhelmed, and traffic gets routed to healthy instances.

How Fly.io Does It

Fly.io (where OpenClaw deploys) runs a global anycast network with built-in load balancing. When a user connects, Fly routes them to the nearest healthy VM. If a VM becomes unhealthy, traffic automatically reroutes elsewhere — no manual intervention.

Layer 4 vs Layer 7

Fly operates at Layer 4 (TCP), which is faster than Layer 7 (HTTP) load balancing because it doesn't inspect application-layer headers. For most web apps this is the right choice — lower latency, less overhead.

When Load Balancing Matters for You

If you're running a high-traffic API, chatbot, or real-time service, Fly's built-in load balancing means you don't need to configure anything. For multi-region deployments, you get it automatically.