Network infrastructure’s traffic loads are all different. No matter how light or how heavy, a network traffic load balancer will manage the traffic to the servers using algorithms that each have their own particular behavior. There are three common load balancing scheduling methods that have different behavioral characteristics to choose from:
Least Connections
Round Robin
Weighted Fastest Response
Least Connections
With the Least Connections scheduling method, the load balancer will send new clients to servers with the least amount of active connections. There will be occasions when clients remain connected to a server for an extended amount of time where other servers may accumulate more client connections than others.
As with any of the load balancing scheduling methods, one cannot always expect to see a leveling of distribution. As connections come and go or remain connected, different servers may gain or lose connections sooner than others. But, the selection of servers to send a client to will continue to be a dynamic decision according to the servers with the Least Connections at the time a client connects.
Round Robin
In a Round Robin scheduling method, the load balancer sends client connections to the next available server in a sequential manner. If all connections are equal in duration and activity, it would be reasonable to expect Round Robin to result in the most even distribution of connections to the servers. However, it must be considered that in real world scenarios not all connections will have equal activity and duration. So, even with Round Robin, there may be some servers carrying more connections than others; especially in cases where clients tend to remain connected for long periods of time.
Weighted Fastest Response
The Weighted Fastest Response scheduling method calculates a value based on the number of current connections, divided by the server weight. The server with the lowest value is determined to be the server that can provide the fastest response.
About AVANU
AVANU designs and develops high quality enterprise products that are cost-effective for IT network infrastructures and data centers. Products are full-featured and reliably high in performance.
WebMux™ Network Traffic Manager is an integrated enterprise-class application delivery network (ADN) and global server load balancing (GSLB) solution with its built-in FireEdge™ for Apps Web Application Firewall (WAF).
WebMux manages, controls, and secures the most stringent network traffic demands reliably, assuring peak performance. The user-friendly menu-driven interface makes WebMux fast to deploy and easy to manage. It meets the U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard Publication (FIPS) 140-2 Levels 1 & 2 validated encryption computer security standard, Trade Agreements Act (TAA), and Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance.
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