SSL termination means the load balancer handles TLS encryption. Clients connect with HTTPS to the balancer. The balancer decrypts and forwards plain HTTP to backend servers.
Benefits:
- Backend servers don't spend CPU on encryption
- Single place to manage certificates
- Load balancer can inspect and route based on content
The connection from balancer to backend is unencrypted. For sensitive environments, use SSL passthrough (balancer forwards encrypted traffic) or SSL bridging (re-encrypt to backends).