The DataReel load balancer (LB) is a software based TCP load balancing solution designed to run on Linux operating systems. The DRLB project was designed to handle any type of TCP connection, acting as a front end server distributing high volumes of TCP connections to multiple back end servers. Load balancing protects your back end servers from saturation when you have more clients connections than any one server can handle. The DRLB server can be used as a high availability resource to provide seamless server fail over. In signal server environments the DRLB server can provide connection limits and cached buffing.