A distributed multi-server Web site can provide the scalability necessary to keep up with growing client demand at popular sites. Load balancing of these distributed Web-server systems, consisting of multiple Web servers for document retrieval and a Domain name server (DNS) for address resolution, opens interesting new problems. In this paper, we investigate the effects of using a more active DNS which, as an atypical centralized scheduler, applies some scheduling strategy in routing the requests to the most suitable Web server. Unlike traditional parallel/distributed systems in which a centralized scheduler has full control of the system, the DNS controls only a very small fraction of the requests reaching the multi-server Web site. This peculiarity, especially in the presence of highly skewed load, makes it very difficult to achieve acceptable load balancing and avoid overloading some Web server. This paper adapts traditional scheduling algorithms to the DNS, proposes new policies, a...