> Aside from the fact I _really_ wouldn't expect that manny actual, live > TCP connections at one time...
Nor would I, although we did see huge numbers of open connections during peak times at eToys. Mostly to the image serving machines though. > I _really_ hate so-called dedicated boxes. They're closed, nasty, > inflexible and often don't work in _your_ situation. Doing smart > session-based redirection can be hard with these boxes. You can make it work with homegrown solutions, but I've found the dedicated load-balancing tools (at least Big/IP) to be effective and fairly easy to work with, even with large loads, failover requirements, and more exotic stuff like sticky sessions. This is one area where the problem seems to be well enough defined for most people to use an off-the-shelf solution. They're often more expensive than they should be, but if you don't have someone on hand who knows the ipchains or LVS stuff it can save you some time and trouble. - Perrin
