# Load Balancing on a Public or Private Network

A load balancer can work on either a public or private network.

#### Load Balancing on a Public Network

You can bind an EIP to a load balancer so that it can receive requests from clients on the Internet and route the requests to backend servers.

Figure 1 Load balancing on a public network

#### Load Balancing on a Private Network

A load balancer has only a private IP address to receive requests from clients in a VPC and route the requests to backend servers in the same VPC. This type of load balancer can only be accessed in a VPC.

Figure 2 Load balancing on a private network

#### Network Types and Load Balancer Types

Table 1 Dedicated load balancers and their network types
Load Balancer Type | Network Type | Network Type
--- | --- | ---
Dedicated load balancers | Public IPv4 network | Each load balancer has an IPv4 EIP bound to enable it to route requests over the Internet.
Private IPv4 network | Each load balancer has only a private IPv4 address and can route requests in a VPC.

IPv6 network

Each load balancer has an IPv6 address bound.

- If the IPv6 address is added to a shared bandwidth, the load balancer can route requests over the Internet.
- If the IPv6 address is not added to a shared bandwidth, the load balancer can route requests only in a VPC.

Table 2 Shared load balancers and their network types
Load Balancer Type | Network Type | Description
--- | --- | ---

Shared load balancers

Public network

Load balancers can route requests on both public and private networks.

- Each load balancer has an EIP bound to enable it to route requests over the Internet.
- The load balancer also has a private IP address and can route requests in a VPC.

Private network | Each load balancer has only a private IP address and can route requests in a VPC.

Parent topic: Service Overview