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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!uwm.edu!news.moneng.mei.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!boulder!sprint!sryashur From: sryashur@sprint.uccs.edu (Surf-Kahuna) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc Subject: Round Robin DNS?? Date: 16 Jul 1995 08:20:24 GMT Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder Lines: 33 Message-ID: <3uai48$2bq@lace.Colorado.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: sprint.uccs.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] 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. Benefits: Balanced load among all web servers; you could actually (rather cheaply) maintain a LARGE web site with just Pentiums all doing the round robin DNS. Also, since not every DNS query is getting the same address, eventually different sections of the Internet will have a different IP address for www.mycompany.com, which would also help to balance out the load on the machines. This is not new stuff; MSN is already doing it, and pretty effectively. Now, how can WE benefit from this? or more importantly, how can named be modified to do this?? Any hints, suggestions, or comments welcome. -Steve