Intelligent load balancing between two or more sites
Failover between two or more sites
Uses for this service range from load balancing traffic between multiple data centers, to providing failover between a main facility and disaster recovery facility, to providing the quickest and most rewarding end-user experience.
Methods
BIL’s global server load balancing products support two basic modes of operation: DNS redirection and HTTP redirection. Each method has advantages in certain situations.
DNS Redirection
The DNS redirection method requires that each location being load balanced have a real, routable Internet IP address.
DNS redirection can be used with any type of IP traffic (as long as it requires DNS resolution). Since DNS resolution is typically performed once at the beginning of each connection, and traffic to be load balanced does not pass through BIL’s cloud, there is virtually no limit to the amount of traffic that can be load balanced.
Persistence between sites is provided by both BIL and the DNS system itself (typically, the DNS reply is cached by the Web browser until re-resolution is required).
HTTP Redirection
When the client request reaches the, it is redirected to the chosen HTTP server using a standard HTTP redirection command.
The HTTP redirection method can only be used for HTTP traffic. With this method, persistence is controlled by site content - the client will only return to BIL for redirection if either the client or the site content itself jumps to a non-relative link or URL.