Load Balancing Question...

[Kevin Darcy]

David R. Conrad wrote:

> Kevin,
>
> > If you reduce the TTL on the RRset then the effect of intermediate caching
> > servers is minimized, the downside being that you increase the query traffic and
> > just generally be a bad net citizen when you do this.
>
> Right, although this doesn't seem to bother many of the folks who are selling
> load balancing "solutions".  At least not yet...
>
> > But it may be a perfectly
> > acceptable approach on a private net or internet.
>
> Agreed.  The problem I see is that people who understand less about the
> implications of the technology will implement a server side load balancing
> solution, test it locally, see that it works as advertised, then assume it
> will work globally.
>
> But perhaps I'm just being paranoid.

It's possible, I suppose. But the high-end load-balancing products don't rely on
DNS trickery and I guess I have confidence that the vendors of those products will
educate the community as to the limitations of the DNS-based approaches. If only the
non-DNS-based products weren't so darn expensive, maybe there wouldn't be such a
temptation to try to use DNS for load balancing. Sounds like a perfect opportunity
for the open source model, don't you think?

> > I don't know anyone
> > who would trust their IBM mainframe to be directly Internet-connected.
>
> Eh?  IBM mainframes make wonderful servers and I know lots connected to the
> Internet (umdd.umd.edu, for example, which has been on the net since at least
> '86).  This is why tn3270 exists...

I guess we all have our respective paranoias.

- Kevin