Understanding Dynamic Load Balancing with a URL Shortener Microservice

To truly grasp load balancing and service discovery, I built a URL shortener using a microservices architecture. Instead of one monolith, I separated it into three services — API, redirect, and analytics — all registered under Consul for service discovery.

Then came the interesting part: configuring Traefik as both a gateway and dynamic load balancer. Traefik automatically detected new service instances from Consul and routed traffic intelligently based on availability.

When I spun up multiple containers for each service, I could see requests balancing dynamically across them. No manual configuration, no downtime. I also visualized service health in real time using the Traefik dashboard.

This setup mimicked real production environments where services scale up and down dynamically — giving me hands-on insight into distributed networking.

Takeaway:
Building a small system with Consul and Traefik taught me how cloud-native load balancing actually works. It’s one thing to read about service discovery — it’s another to see traffic flow across microservices you built yourself.