Quality of Service (QoS) is an important factor in determining the performance of applications and the quality of experience (QoE) perceived by network users. Several techniques to guarantee QoS exist, and load balancing is one such method. While traditional load balancing strategies can account for the QoS requirements of multiple flows, they primarily focus on a single or a limited number of QoS parameters. As a result, they often fail to capture the full complexity of modern network traffic. This paper presents a comparative analysis of existing QoS-aware load balancing mechanisms, highlighting their strengths and their limitations. Building on this analysis, we propose an extended QoS-aware load balancing strategy that considers multiple QoS parameters, including throughput, latency, packet loss, and jitter. The proposed strategy was implemented and evaluated in a simulated software-defined campus network (SDCN) environment using a RYU controller and Mininet. Data was collected and analysed to assess the impact of considering additional QoS parameters on network performance. Our results demonstrate that implementing link load balancing whilst considering additional QoS parameters greatly enhances both network and application performance. This study also confirms that an extended QoS-aware load balancing strategy is important as it allows for the specific needs of each traffic flow to be catered to.