You're kind of right. You can also use something like jump consistent hash [0] which only requires you to have a consistent ordering of the hosts where you're s

You're kind of right. You can also use something like jump consistent hash [0] which only requires you to have a consistent ordering of the hosts where you're sending the information. We (Facebook) use something similar for our caches. It requires a linear array of hosts but you've already got that if you're load balancing. [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.2294 https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.2294