From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Aug 12 21:37:10 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id VAA16564 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 12 Aug 1996 21:37:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from post.io.org (post.io.org [198.133.36.6]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id VAA16554 for ; Mon, 12 Aug 1996 21:37:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from zap.io.org (taob@zap.io.org [198.133.36.81]) by post.io.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id AAA08793; Tue, 13 Aug 1996 00:35:41 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 00:35:41 -0400 (EDT) From: Brian Tao To: Brandon Gillespie cc: FREEBSD-HACKERS-L , ipfilter@postbox.anu.edu.au Subject: Re: Load-balancing box In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 12 Aug 1996, Brandon Gillespie wrote: > > Wouldn't it be simpler to hack the name daemon to do the load > balancing, so when they lookup 'www.xxx.yyy' it picks a machine and > directs them to the IP for 'wwwX.xxx.yyy'? You don't have to hack BIND to do that, since it already supports round-robin hostnames with multiple A records. What Cisco's LocalDirector box does (and what others are proposing to do with a FreeBSD box and ipfilter) is forward packets divert packets to different hosts based on a least-recently-used cycle, or least-load cycle, or whatever local policy you have. It will also automatically remove a host from the pool if it is down or doesn't have a server running. It's basically a proxy server with some extra smarts built in. -- Brian Tao (BT300, taob@io.org, taob@ican.net) Senior Systems and Network Administrator, Internet Canada Corp. "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't"