👀 Views: 62 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-07

python sockets multithreading load-balancing Python

I'm experimenting with I'm stuck trying to I've been struggling with this for a few days now and could really use some help. I've searched everywhere and can't find a clear answer. I'm working on a multi-threaded TCP socket application in Python 3.11 where the server needs to handle multiple clients, but I'm running into issues when selecting which server instance to connect to based on load. The scenario arises when I try to implement a basic load balancing mechanism. I have a list of server addresses, and based on some performance metrics, I want to connect to the least loaded server. However, I'm finding that connections sometimes unexpected result or time out unexpectedly. Here’s a simplified version of what I’m trying to do: ```python import socket import threading import time class LoadBalancedClient: def __init__(self, servers): self.servers = servers self.lock = threading.Lock() def select_server(self): # Assuming servers is a dict with 'address' and 'load' with self.lock: least_loaded = min(self.servers, key=lambda s: self.servers[s]['load']) return least_loaded def connect_to_server(self): server = self.select_server() print(f'Connecting to {server}') try: sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM) sock.connect((self.servers[server]['address'], self.servers[server]['port'])) # Simulate some communication time.sleep(0.5) sock.close() except socket.behavior as e: print(f'Connection behavior with {server}: {e}') def run(self, num_connections): threads = [] for _ in range(num_connections): t = threading.Thread(target=self.connect_to_server) threads.append(t) t.start() for t in threads: t.join() # Example server configuration servers = { 'server1': {'address': '127.0.0.1', 'port': 8080, 'load': 5}, 'server2': {'address': '127.0.0.1', 'port': 8081, 'load': 3}, } client = LoadBalancedClient(servers) client.run(10) ``` In this code, when I run multiple threads trying to connect simultaneously, I sometimes see connection errors like "Connection refused" or "Connection timed out". The load values are static in this example, but in practice, I would update them dynamically. I suspect the immediate load balancing logic might be causing some race conditions. Has anyone experienced similar issues or have suggestions on how to improve the server selection mechanism to handle these concurrent connections more gracefully? Also, would it be better to manage connections more explicitly, or is this thread-per-connection model generally safe in such scenarios? I'm working on a web app that needs to handle this. Thanks in advance! For context: I'm using Python on Ubuntu. Has anyone else encountered this? The stack includes Python and several other technologies. Has anyone dealt with something similar? My team is using Python for this desktop app. Any help would be greatly appreciated!