From owner-freebsd-isp Thu Oct 8 16:38:06 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA20805 for freebsd-isp-outgoing; Thu, 8 Oct 1998 16:38:06 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from caladan.tdx.co.uk (caladan.tdx.co.uk [195.188.177.4]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id QAA20572 for ; Thu, 8 Oct 1998 16:36:44 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from kpielorz@tdx.co.uk) Received: from localhost (kpielorz@localhost) by caladan.tdx.co.uk (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id AAA15805; Fri, 9 Oct 1998 00:36:08 +0100 (BST) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 00:36:08 +0100 (BST) From: Karl Pielorz To: Tim Wolfe cc: Bill Fumerola , "Jeffrey J. Mountin" , freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: IP Load balancing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Thu, 8 Oct 1998, Tim Wolfe wrote: > Keep in mind that I'm not even a self proclaimed expert here. This is my > admittedly limited understanding of the layer2/layer3 switching issue. > Layer3 Switching Hub: > > Listens to things at a protocol level, basing it's switching decisions on > the (in this case) IP address rather than the MAC address. This gives an > administrator the ability to setup routing (or forced switching of traffic > to specific destinations via specific ports) for traffic that might be > multiple hops away based on things other than just next hop. > > This would be useful for load balancing links to servers (just to show a > single practicle application) That sounds OK as far as I know, though my OSI is a little rusty... I went on a Cisco course some time ago - they were proudly proclaiming the benefits of layer3 switching, to form a device they were apparently going to call a 'swrouter' (switching-router)... This got even more complex when the concept of a switching / routing bridge (swbruter? ;-) came up... I know a lot of the high end cisco gear will let you 'route' your switched traffic (i.e. layer3 routine/switching etc.) - but I'm not too sure about the load balancing... I know that even the lower end Cisco routers now come with something called 'Net manager' is it? - which is meant to accept all incoming connections and forward them onto the real server (under the guise of protecting from DoS attacks (i.e. it bins partial connects that timeout the initial 3way handshake), and providing 'apparent' 100% availability).. It's the last bit I'm trying to do in software on FBSD at the moment... :) Regards, Karl To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message