Return to BSD News archive
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!oleane!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!news.mathworks.com!news.kei.com!nntp.et.byu.edu!news.byu.edu!hamblin.math.byu.edu!park.uvsc.edu!usenet
From: Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
Subject: Re: Round Robin DNS??
Date: 17 Jul 1995 19:15:48 GMT
Organization: Utah Valley State College, Orem, Utah
Lines: 35
Message-ID: <3uect4$mf8@park.uvsc.edu>
References: <3uai48$2bq@lace.Colorado.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hecate.artisoft.com
sryashur@sprint.uccs.edu (Surf-Kahuna) wrote:
]
] Ok, here's the concept: You have say, 3 machines all running
] a web server. (Let's assume your company is *SO* profitable
] that you actually need all three to handle the load)
]
] The problem: how to effectively ballance out the load of the
] WWW trffic among all three machines.
]
] The solution (at least one of them): a DNS server that
] alternates between the three IP addresses of the machines
] everytime it is queried for say, www.mycompany.com. I.e.,
] The first time the DNS server is queried, it gives the IP
] address for www1.mycompany.com, the second time it's queried,
] it gives out the IP address for www2.mycompany.com, etc. etc.
This assumes (wrongly) that there will be a constant average
session length between servers.
This would *probably* work adequately *if* you didn't end up
with a local cached copy of the host address that then gets
reused on your machine without "benefit" of the round robin.
The *real* problem is that the protocols are designed to attach
to hosts instead of services. Consider: do you really give a
damn *where* the next HTML page comes from so long as it arrives?
I think eventaully this will be dealt with at the protocol level.
Terry Lambert
terry@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.