Load Shedding

In networking, you’ve probably come across moments where systems slow down or crash under heavy traffic. Load shedding is like a safety net for such situations. It’s a way to manage overwhelming traffic and keep your system stable. 

If you’re running a network or application, understanding load shedding can help you keep everything running smoothly, even when the pressure is on.

What is Load Shedding in Networking?

Let’s break it down simply. Load shedding in networking is when you intentionally drop or reject some requests to avoid overloading your system. Think of it as saying, “Sorry, we’re full right now,” instead of letting everything pile up and cause a crash. It’s all about protecting the system from being overwhelmed by too much traffic.

For example, if your website is experiencing a sudden spike in visitors during a sale, load shedding ensures that critical functions like checkout keep working, even if some visitors can’t access other parts of the site. This way, the entire system doesn’t grind to a halt.

How Load Shedding Works to Maintain System Stability

Load shedding kicks in when your network or application reaches its capacity. Here’s how it typically works:

1. Monitoring Traffic: Your system keeps an eye on the incoming traffic and checks if it’s nearing its limits.
2. Triggering Limits: When traffic gets too high, a predefined rule or threshold activates the load-shedding process.
3. Dropping Requests: Less critical or non-essential requests are rejected first, freeing up resources for the most important tasks.
4. Prioritization: It ensures that essential services (like payment processing) stay online while less critical parts (like image-heavy pages) take a backseat.

By doing this, load shedding keeps the system stable and ensures users still get the core services they need.

Benefits of Load Shedding for Network Performance

When you think about load shedding, it’s easy to focus on preventing a system crash. But there’s much more to it than just keeping the lights on.

1. System Stability

The most immediate benefit of load shedding is preventing total system failure. Think of it as a pressure release valve. 

When traffic exceeds what your system can handle, load shedding ensures that your servers aren’t overwhelmed. Instead of collapsing under pressure, your system continues running, even if at reduced capacity. 

This is especially critical during events like product launches, flash sales, or viral content surges.

2. Improved User Experience (Under Pressure)

Even during high-traffic periods, load shedding prioritizes critical requests, ensuring that essential services like payments or account logins remain operational. 

While some users may experience slower loading times or be unable to access non-essential features, the overall experience remains functional for most. 

A functioning site is always better than a crashed one, and load shedding ensures your users aren’t left stranded.

3. Resource Optimization

When traffic spikes, resources such as bandwidth, processing power, and memory are stretched thin. Load shedding ensures these resources are allocated where they’re needed the most. 

For example, during a traffic surge, your system might prioritize transactional services over delivering large media files. 

4. Cost Efficiency

Downtime is expensive. Not only does it lead to lost revenue, but it can also harm your brand’s reputation. By keeping your system operational during heavy traffic, load shedding saves you from the costly consequences of outages. 

Moreover, load shedding minimizes the need for emergency scaling or over-provisioning of resources, which can be financially draining if done reactively.

5. Protection Against Bad Actors

Not all traffic is good traffic. Load shedding can serve as an early defense mechanism against Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks or bot-generated traffic. 

By rejecting low-priority or suspicious requests, it reduces the strain on your system and ensures that genuine users have a better chance of accessing critical services.

6. Consistent Performance During Spikes

For businesses that operate in high-demand environments—such as e-commerce platforms, gaming servers, or streaming services—load shedding ensures a consistent experience during peak times. 

Imagine an online game server handling a flood of players during a major event. Load shedding helps maintain a smooth experience for most players, even if some features like advanced graphics or extra data updates are temporarily scaled back.

7. Flexibility and Customization

Another underrated benefit is how adaptable load shedding is to your specific needs. You can implement tailored strategies to suit your business. 

For instance, a healthcare provider might prioritize emergency response systems, while an e-commerce platform might focus on keeping its payment gateways operational. 

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Types of Load Shedding Techniques

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but here are the most common techniques:

1. Random Dropping: Some requests are dropped randomly to reduce the load. It’s quick but doesn’t prioritize which requests are more important.
2. Priority-Based Shedding: Critical requests are processed first, while less important ones are dropped. This method ensures that essential services always stay active.
3. Rate Limiting: Limits the number of requests a user or system can make within a set time frame. It’s a fair way to share resources during traffic surges.
4. Service Degradation: Non-essential features, like loading high-resolution images, are temporarily disabled to save resources.
5. Geographic Filtering: Requests from specific regions are prioritized or deprioritized based on current system capacity.

Each technique has its place, and you can even combine them depending on your network’s needs.

Best Practices for Implementing Load Shedding

If you’re ready to put load shedding into action, here are some tips to do it right:

1. Set Clear Priorities: Decide which services or features are the most critical to keep running during heavy traffic.
2. Monitor Regularly: Use real-time monitoring tools to detect when traffic is nearing your system’s limits.
3. Use Automation: Automate load-shedding triggers to respond instantly to spikes in traffic.
4. Communicate with Users: Let users know what’s happening if certain features are unavailable—it builds trust.
5. Test Your System: Simulate high-traffic scenarios to see how your load-shedding techniques perform under pressure.
6. Adjust as Needed: Regularly review and tweak your load-shedding strategy based on performance data and user feedback.

Why Too Much Load Shedding is Bad

While load shedding is a great way to keep your system stable under pressure, overdoing it can lead to several problems. It’s like solving one problem only to create a bunch of others. 

Here’s why too much load shedding can backfire:

This happens on a much larger scale too. In June 2024, Pakistan faced an electricity shortfall of approximately 5,902 MW, leading to load shedding of up to 14 hours in certain areas.

How to Avoid Excessive Load Shedding

To minimize reliance on load shedding, implement the following strategies:

• Scale Infrastructure:
  • Add servers (horizontal scaling) or upgrade hardware (vertical scaling) to handle more traffic.
  • Use cloud-based elastic scaling for automatic adjustments during surges.
• Optimize Performance:
  • Streamline code and queries to reduce system load.
  • Use CDNs and caching to offload frequent requests.
  • Optimize database operations with indexing.
• Control Traffic Flow:
  • Use traffic shaping to queue or throttle non-critical requests.
  • Set rate limits to ensure fair resource usage among users.
• Prioritize Critical Services:
  • Focus on keeping essential features (e.g., payments, logins) running.
  • Temporarily disable non-essential functions during peak times.
• Monitor and Predict Traffic:
  • Leverage tools to track traffic in real time and set alerts for spikes.
  • Analyze trends to prepare for high-demand events.
• Refine Load-Shedding Rules:
  • Use dynamic thresholds that adapt to current conditions.
  • Apply granular controls to target specific traffic types or requests.
  • Gradually shed load instead of dropping large volumes at once.
• Communicate with Users:
  • Display real-time status updates and user-friendly error messages.
  • Notify users about expected disruptions during peak activity.

Conclusion

Avoiding excessive load shedding comes down to preparation and smart resource management. You’ll need to be scaling your infrastructure, optimizing performance, and monitoring traffic closely, to reduce your dependence on load shedding. 

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