The most interesting thing happening on the Open Source front in load balancing is the Eddie project. Sponsored by Ericsson, Eddie is written in an unusual language that came out of Ericsson called erlang.

The Eddie project's claim is that it provides:

• A web server to be distributed geographically across multiple sites, across multiple continents, through the use of an Enhanced Domain Name Service platform.
• Maximisation of web server throughput, through the use of dynamic load balancing across sites and between servers within a single site.
• Scalability via the straightforward addition of new servers to existing infrastructure, allowing on-going support of user Quality of Service even as server usage increases.
• Reliability through the automatic detection and takeover of failed units.
• Flexibility through support for Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD and Windows NT, and third party web server software, including Apache.