The primary purpose of load balancing in network management is to distribute incoming network traffic across multiple servers or resources, ensuring optimal use of resources and enhancing system responsiveness. By evenly distributing workloads, load balancing prevents any single server from becoming overloaded, improving application availability and minimizing response times. This strategy also enhances fault tolerance; if one server fails, traffic is automatically redirected to other operational servers, maintaining continuity. Load balancers can also perform health checks, managing traffic efficiently and ensuring a seamless user experience even during peak demand.