From owner-freebsd-isp Wed Oct 7 02:44:33 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id CAA21231 for freebsd-isp-outgoing; Wed, 7 Oct 1998 02:44:33 -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 CAA21226 for ; Wed, 7 Oct 1998 02:44:31 -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 KAA04751; Wed, 7 Oct 1998 10:44:20 +0100 (BST) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 10:44:20 +0100 (BST) From: Karl Pielorz To: Manar Hussain cc: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: IP Load balancing In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19981006222923.009d2330@stingray.ivision.co.uk> 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 Tue, 6 Oct 1998, Manar Hussain wrote: > The really cute way to do this is with a layer 4 switch ... something like > an alteon @10k odd + so it needs to be a serious solution requirement. The > switch itself has the ip address that is publically accessed and behind it > sits a network with it's on set of ip addresses etc. The switch farms out > the traffic as required in a pretty clever way, including tracking > sessions, having load balancing ruels, making sure the servers are up with > both pings and response checks on port 80 blah blah. > > Something a few people do that's also useful is to have the site > set-up/configured on two servers but only running on one with requests > coming in on a virtual interface. If this server goes down you have systems > in place to bring that ip address up on your back up server and things > start to work again with very little down time. > > Variations are possible of course ... Hi, I actually started working on something like this in house, the idea was to have a FreeBSD box (possibly running PicoBSD) sitting as our front router... It then 'accepts' all incoming requests for Web, SMTP, POP3 etc. - and maintains a list of 'known' working servers, and will forward the connect to each server depending on a set of rules... Servers are checked to be active / up before the connection is accepted / forwarded, so that in theory the end user uses only 1 IP and see's 100% uptime... I've finished the first part of this, which is a 'dummy' POP3 server that will accept and authenticate _anybody_ and just tell them they don't have any new mail - this is the 'fallback' server, i.e. if all our POP3 servers are down the user gets DummyPop instead... Cruel, but it works ;-) If I get a chance I'll get the details written up and on the web... Regards, Karl Pielorz To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message