How do you handle load balancing in REST API services?

Short answer: Use a load balancer (NGINX, HAProxy, AWS ELB, Azure Front Door). Distribute traffic across multiple instances to avoid bottlenecks. Support round-robin, least connections, or IP hash strategies. Enable health checks to route traffic only to healthy instances. Combine with auto-scaling for dynamic traffic management.

Real-world example (ShopNest)

Creating an order is POST /api/orders → 201 with Location header. Fetching is GET /api/orders/{id} → 200 or 404.

Say this in the interview

1. Define — one clear sentence (the short answer above).
2. Example — relate it to a project like ShopNest or your real work.
3. Trade-off — when you would not use it.