From owner-freebsd-isp Tue Oct 6 17:16:30 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id RAA06804 for freebsd-isp-outgoing; Tue, 6 Oct 1998 17:16:30 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from peak.mountin.net (peak.mountin.net [207.227.119.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA06687 for ; Tue, 6 Oct 1998 17:15:40 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jeff-ml@mountin.net) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by peak.mountin.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) id TAA18310; Tue, 6 Oct 1998 19:15:34 -0500 (CDT) Received: from luthien-10.isdn.mke.execpc.com(169.207.65.10) by peak.mountin.net via smap (V1.3) id sma018308; Tue Oct 6 19:15:17 1998 Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19981006190840.00f75448@207.227.119.2> X-Sender: jeff-ml@207.227.119.2 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Tue, 06 Oct 1998 19:08:40 -0500 To: steven@shellnet.co.uk (Steven Fletcher), freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG From: "Jeffrey J. Mountin" Subject: Re: IP Load balancing In-Reply-To: <361a2474.1852724@smtp.shellnet.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org At 02:22 PM 10/6/98 GMT, Steven Fletcher wrote: >I've recently encountered a product on WinNT, named Convoy and I am >wondering if there is anything at all like this for FreeBSD... I'll >explain. > >It basically is a way of 2 machines and 2/4 network cards sharing one >IP address. They talk to each other (via MAC I belive) and also talk >to the router which they are connected to via the network, answering >ARP requests in a kind of you-me order. This sounds like Spider (?), which is supposed to do real time mirroring of filesystems between server pairs. DNS is setup for server distribution eg: server_1 IN A ip_1 server_2 IN A ip_2 server IN CNAME server_1 server IN CNAME server_2 >If one server crashes then the other one takes over regardless. Tranparently to the world. >Now; FreeBSD has never - in over a year now of using it crashed for me >:).... but as a service to our customers we do boast high levels of >redundancy - You get the picture.... so basically is there any kind of >sharing system like this for FreeBSD ? Round-Robin DNS is not the >answer - if we take one server offline then every 2nd user gets a duff >connection. Huh? You have 2 misconceptions here. Distributed "Round-Robin" DNS would not mean a "duff" connection for every 2nd or nth user. DNS always checks alternatives and the choice of them is supposed to be random. Only hacks. No bullet-proof, commerical quality program for this on FBSD, AFAIK. The problem is in mirroring the server in real time, especially on a very active filesystem, without losing or corrupting data. Not sure but I believe that something is being worked on, not sure if this is a thing-that-it-may-do-someday for Greg Lehey's Vinum or something else altogether. Don't feel like searching the archives at the moment either and threads on hackers get overly-long at times (ducks). Certainly something that everyone wants and could use. 8-) Jeff Mountin - Unix Systems TCP/IP networking jeff@mountin.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message