An adaptive load balancer intelligently steers data traffic through a software defined network (SDN) to which the load balancer is operatively coupled. The network has egress ports to which a plurality of servers is connected. The network has an SDN controller which generates statistical information concerning the network. The adaptive load balancer includes a weighted round robin scheduler module which receives client requests and, based on the statistical information generated by the SDN controller, determines a weight to be attributed to each server of the plurality of servers connected to the network. The adaptive load balancer operates in a passive port mode, a passive path mode, an active path mode and an active path with quality of service (QoS) overlay mode.