WeAreDevelopers Logo WeAreDevelopers
Sign in
For You LIVE
World Congress 2025 • Aug 20, 2025 • Session details

gRPC Load Balancing Deep Dive

Max Hausner , Yves Fauser

Your new pods sit idle while initial targets remain overloaded by long-lived gRPC streams. Discover how to eliminate HTTP/2 connection hotspots using advanced layer 7 load balancing.

Pause
Mute Enter Fullscreen
#1 about 2 min

Overview of gRPC and language-agnostic environments

The gRPC framework allows defining service environments and applications across multiple programming languages.

#2 about 1 min

Comparing protobuf efficiency against JSON responses

Using protobuf formats reduces byte size over the wire compared to standard JSON APIs.

#3 about 2 min

Limitations and browser support challenges in gRPC

The gRPC framework faces browser compatibility limitations and lacks the overall ecosystem maturity of traditional REST APIs.

#4 about 2 min

Different methods for making gRPC network calls

The gRPC protocol supports unary, server streaming, client streaming, and bidirectional communication modes.

#5 about 3 min

Protocol stack and HTTP/2 persistent connections

The gRPC stack relies on HTTP/2 over persistent TCP connections which complicates traditional layer 4 load balancing.

#6 about 4 min

Distinguishing client-based and infrastructure-based load balancing

Client-side balancing works well internally while infrastructure balancers provide external network demarcation points.

#7 about 3 min

Basic and load-based balancing algorithm strategies

Round robin and least outstanding request algorithms manage traffic distribution dynamically across available targets.

#8 about 5 min

Hash-based load balancing and connection stickiness

Consistent ring hashing and n-tuple hashing maintain target stickiness but risk creating heavy traffic hotspots.

#9 about 2 min

Autoscaling limitations with persistent HTTP/2 streams

Adding new pods during high CPU load fails to resolve hotspots naturally due to long-lived streaming connections.

#10 about 3 min

Functional testing and health checks for gRPC

Tools like grpcurl and layer 7 balancers decode protobuf schemas for functional API testing and automated health checks.

#11 about 2 min

Benchmarking gRPC endpoints using load testing tools

The ghz command line tool evaluates response times and performance distribution across different balancing algorithms.

#12 about 3 min

Resolving hotspots by separating streaming and unary traffic

Routing streams and unary calls through different target groups prevents severe traffic imbalances during autoscaling.

#13 about 2 min

Key considerations for gRPC load distribution

Understanding client load distribution and shortening session lengths mitigates traffic hotspots continuously.

Matching moments

6:34 min

Designing load-balanced cloud architectures for concurrent routing

Oliver Zimmert · LIVE

2:49 min

Handling multi-connection metrics and gRPC integration

Jan Mensch Jan Mensch · WWC Europe 2026

3:11 min

Evaluating communication protocols for high performance microservices

Aleksandr Kalikov · LIVE

2:41 min

High performance communication protocols using gRPC

Simon Auer Simon Auer · WWC 2025

12:17 min

Managing edge cases and load balancing SSE

Rainer Stropek Rainer Stropek · LIVE

3:05 min

Routing traffic natively with Kubernetes and service meshes

Kevin Dubois Kevin Dubois · WWC 2025

More from World Congress 2025

GenAI Security: Navigating the Unseen Iceberg thumbnail
24:33
10 months ago

GenAI Security: Navigating the Unseen Iceberg

Maish Saidel-Keesing

Behind the Code: How Women Are Powering the Future of AI thumbnail
30:28
12 months ago

Behind the Code: How Women Are Powering the Future of AI

Alexandra Wudel, Laura Moritz, Madalina Florean

The AI Hype Filter: What’s Real, What’s Investable, What’s Noise? thumbnail
28:12
12 months ago

The AI Hype Filter: What’s Real, What’s Investable, What’s Noise?

Justus Lumpe, Konstantin Vinogradov, Nils Eiteneyer, Stephan Wirris

AI in Leadership: How Technology is Reshaping Executive Roles thumbnail
28:19
12 months ago

AI in Leadership: How Technology is Reshaping Executive Roles

Bernd Datler, Jasmin Kaiser, Jeff Hausmann, Sonja Alvarez

The AI-Ready Stack: Rethinking the Engineering Org of the Future thumbnail
28:09
12 months ago

The AI-Ready Stack: Rethinking the Engineering Org of the Future

Alex Laubscher, Jan Oberhauser, Keno Dreßel, Mirko Novakovic

AI Sovereignty: What Does It Take? thumbnail
29:13
12 months ago

AI Sovereignty: What Does It Take?

Boris Hecker, Clemens Wasner, Robin Hermann, Sonja Alvarez

Upcoming sessions on this topic

Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

Trust, But Verify: Continuous GPU Validation at Scale

Kyle Bell

VP of AI @ TensorWave

Kyle Bell
Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

Boring Failover: Predictable Region Recovery Across 5,000 Microservices

Garvit Kataria, Sahil Sabharwal

Garvit Kataria
Sahil Sabharwal
Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

One Repo, One Strategy: Scalable Full-Stack Testing in a Monorepo World

Bartosz Leczycki, Paweł Matynia

Bartosz Leczycki
Paweł Matynia
Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

public void saveMoney(AI): The Developer's Guide to Unit Economics

Hrushikesh Pokala

Senior Software Engineer Lead at Equifax

Hrushikesh Pokala
Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

Run your agents in Kubernetes: Build once, deploy anywhere. But really?

Michal Salanci

Senior Systems Engineer at ESET Cybersecurity

Michal Salanci
Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

Designing APIs That Survive AI Agents at Scale

Phani Pendurthi

Mastercard, Principal Software Engineer

Phani Pendurthi

Related videos

Designing gRPC APIs - The things they don't tell you thumbnail
27:17
WWC 2023 • almost 3 years ago

Designing gRPC APIs - The things they don't tell you

Bastian Eicher

Boosting OpenSearch Performance: gRPC Search in Action thumbnail
24:20
Europe 2026 Virtual • about 1 month ago

Boosting OpenSearch Performance: gRPC Search in Action

Sakshi Nasha

The Great API Debate: REST, GraphQL, or gRPC? thumbnail
28:16
WWC 2024 • almost 2 years ago

The Great API Debate: REST, GraphQL, or gRPC?

Alexis Yushin

Rate-limiting using eBPF and Istio: How to protect your SaaS customers from themselves thumbnail
31:32
WWC Europe 2026 • about 1 month ago

Rate-limiting using eBPF and Istio: How to protect your SaaS customers from themselves

Jan Mensch

From 0 to 1.000.000: How to build a serverless raffle service for hyperscale thumbnail
30:03
WWC 2023 • almost 3 years ago

From 0 to 1.000.000: How to build a serverless raffle service for hyperscale

Marco Plaul, Martin Sakowski

Fifty Shades of Kubernetes Autoscaling thumbnail
30:26
WWC 2023 • over 2 years ago

Fifty Shades of Kubernetes Autoscaling

Mario-Leander Reimer

Related articles

From learning to earning

Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.