The two load-balance strategies

A load-balance group spreads traffic across several nodes and takes one extra field, strategy:

proxy-groups:
  - name: Balanced
    type: load-balance
    proxies: [node-A, node-B, node-C]
    url: http://www.gstatic.com/generate_204
    interval: 300
    strategy: consistent-hashing   # or round-robin

Behavior

• consistent-hashing (default): the node is chosen by hashing the destination — the same site always exits through the same node. Total traffic spreads out while each site sees a stable IP (login sessions and risk control stay happy);
• round-robin: each new connection takes the next node in turn. The most even spread, but a site sees your IP change constantly — hello "unusual login" checks. Fits login-free bulk download traffic.

Who needs it

Most people do not — url-test auto-selection is enough. Its real value: heavy downloaders aggregating several bandwidth-limited lines, or spreading risk across nodes of uneven quality. Note it cannot speed up a single connection (one connection still rides one node); it raises aggregate throughput across many connections.