Internet Load Balancing software

The Internet Load Balancing software can be made use to take care of the resilience to the respective Internet connection. The use of two independent ISP or an ISDN backup system helps in this. The software acts like or is rather a firewall application that takes care of the availability of applications like special email alerts on link failure and URL or the content filtering.

The Internet Load Balancing software is like a program that is actually listening on the port. This is a source where clients are connected to access the services. The load balancer forwards the requests to one of the “backend” servers. Later it replies to the load balancer. This in turn facilitates the load balancer to respond to the client.

Merits to the clients are :

Helps them from contacting the backend servers on a direct connection .
The connection has security benefits by concealing the structure of the internal network; prevents the attacks on the network that may run on other ports.

Internet Load Balancing software is targeted at the Small to Medium Enterprises or SME. The industry-dedicated software provides a range of load balancing modes that could be used to make use of the bandwidth available. It also provides the multilink facility to connect and link up to sixteen Internet connections. This is achieved through any Ethernet presented intermediary. The Internet Load Balancing technology is designed to monitor the Internet Links – in case of a failure, it also ‘failovers’ to the remaining and functional lines.

In short, Load balancers are devices that perform the functions of load balancing that maintain multiple connections. Load balancers are used to increase capacity and reliability of applications. A network load balancer is used to split the network load across servers.

There are various Load Balancing solutions and software available in the market with distinguishing features.

We will now have an insight into them.

1. XRio UBM’s Outbound Load Balancing solution offers software. It has the following features:

Eases traffic to build up with applications like VoIP during peak periods. This causes a the queuing up of data packets or data packet loss if the bandwidth is low.
Logical grouping of multiple Internet connections into an organization’s network. This is much better than a single connection to increase bandwidth and availability.
Sharing of traffic between each of the Internet connection
Connects various Internet access technologies like Cable, Leased Lines, SDSL, ISDN, ADSL, etc

2. F 5 Networks

This offers a BIG-IP network appliance and BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager – a network load balancer. The main features of the load balancer software features are:

Helps in load handling if a server goes down
The load balancing happens in a Traffic Management Operating System (TMOS) and runs a Linux Operating system for carrying out Management Tasks
A varying feature / function is the Limited FirePass and WAN Jet that runs on TMOS as modules. It offers secure network to cover a wide range of users.

The BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager is another solution that helps users with accessing the best performing data center. The features and applications are to :

Take care of disaster recovery
SOA Application Management
Criteria Management at a global level

3. CISCO

The CISCO router software is available in the market for the purpose of Load Balancing It is available over all router platforms. The features of this are:

Introduced in the market as a result of routing tables having multiple paths to a destination.
It is based on routing protocols such as information protocol, RIPv2, enhanced interior gateway protocol and Interior gateway routing protocol
The protocols allow routers to use multiple paths for forwarding packets
The number of entries the routing protocol fixes in the table limits determines the number of paths.
Six different paths are configured

Per destination load balancing – router distributes the packets depending on the destination address

Features

Demand caching system is supportive of per-destination load balancing
Traffic for different hosts use different paths on the same destination

Per Packet Load Balancing – router passes a packet for destination – one over each packet

Features

Equal load across links is achieved
The forwarding process determines the outgoing interface for the packets by tracking the route table
Equal utilization of links is ensured. Ideal for small speed interfaces

New switching schemes – Cisco Express Forwarding

Features:

Fast facilitation of one for per packet and per designation load balancing – helps in having the extra resources to deal with possessing the CEF entries and adjacencies.

4. FatPipe’s “WARP” for Load Balancing –

This is a high-speed router-clustering device from FatPipe Networks. It is the ultimate solution for companies that want the highest levels of WAN redundancy, reliability, and speed for data traffic directed from the network to the Internet as well as data traffic directed to servers hosted internally.

Technology of WARP

WARP aggregates any combination of DS3, T1, E3, E1, DSL, OCN, ISDN, wireless, and cable lines. It enables dynamic data transmission over multiple paths for the combined speed of the connections and for redundancy, providing clients with the confidence that data lines will remain up at all times regardless of router, ISP, line, or backbone failures.

Benefits of WARP:

WARP works with all existing hardware and applications and is the leading alternative to BGP load balancing. FatPipe WARP is available in several different throughput versions. FatPipe can accommodate small companies and branch offices with its lower throughput versions starting at 5 Mbps, as well as enterprise level customers who require speeds up to 2 Gb. FatPipe WARP is available in two versions: 50 Mbps and 155 Mbps. Currently, this is available and capable of Gig speeds also.

WARP and Load Balancing:

WARP dynamically load balances inbound and outbound IP traffic for the highest levels of reliability and redundancy of WAN/Internet connections.

Site Load Balancing from FatPipe:

WARP units can be configured to automatically load balance site traffic to one or more remote sites, where inbound connectivity to Internet accessible servers is critical. Site Load Balancing also allows for Site Failover. This technology utilizes FatPipe Site Load Balancing, which is an add-on feature. This is discussed in detail in the latter part of the document.This document provides details/techniques and aspects of internet load balancing. The document concludes with the scope of the concept in the current IT business scenario.