MAC address translation (MAT)

In load balancing, the load balancer distributes the incoming requests to the various web servers. The distribution can take place according to several procedures, of which MAC Address Translation (MAT) is one, Network Address Translation( NAT) another.

The MAT method is a Layer 2 method in which a client makes a request to an application server. The load balancer receives the server 's IP address and uses a static load balancing algorithm to decide which server will handle the request. The load balancer replaces the IP address for the application server with the MAC address for the server selected by the algorithm and sends the request to the server it has selected.