What does load balancing in routing aim to achieve?

Load balancing in routing is a technique aimed at distributing traffic evenly across multiple paths within a network. This is particularly useful in scenarios where there are multiple links or paths available to reach a destination. By spreading the traffic load, load balancing helps to optimize network performance, enhance redundancy, and improve fault tolerance.

When multiple paths are utilized, it can lead to more efficient use of resources, minimizing congestion on individual links and often providing quicker response times for data traffic. This distribution can be based on various algorithms, like round-robin, least connections, or even bandwidth considerations, depending on the specific requirements and characteristics of the network.

The other options do not accurately represent the goal of load balancing. Increasing the complexity of routing protocols is generally not a desired outcome; centralizing traffic management contradicts the decentralized nature of load balancing; and reducing the number of routes in use may limit the available paths, which is counterproductive to the fundamental purpose of load balancing, which thrives on utilizing multiple routes to manage traffic effectively.