---
title: Traffic steering · Cloudflare Load Balancing docs
description: When requests come to your load balancer, it distributes them across your pools and endpoints according to three factors:
lastUpdated: 2024-08-13T19:56:56.000Z
source_url:
  html: https://a74404c8.preview.developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/understand-basics/traffic-steering/index.md
  md: https://a74404c8.preview.developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/understand-basics/traffic-steering/
---

When requests come to your load balancer, it distributes them across your pools and endpoints according to three factors:

1. [Pool and endpoint health](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/understand-basics/health-details/): Traffic decisions start with which pools and endpoints are available and should receive traffic.
2. [Global traffic steering](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/understand-basics/traffic-steering/steering-policies/): Policies set on your [load balancer](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/load-balancers/) that route traffic to attached and available pools.
3. [Local traffic steering](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/understand-basics/traffic-steering/origin-level-steering/): These are policies set on each [pool](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/pools/) that route traffic to available endpoints within the pool.

When a pool or endpoint becomes unhealthy, your load balancer and pools redistribute traffic according to these same policies.
