Abstract: Adaptive load balancing may be implemented for a distributed system. An evaluation of criteria for creating a mapping for an identifier associated with requests may be performed. The created mapping may route requests to a distributed system to request handling nodes that cache request information for performing the requests. When requests are received, if an identifier determined to be associated with the request is mapped to request handling nodes, then the request may be sent to the identified request handling nodes instead of performing a load balancing technique to select a request handling node for the request.