unfortunatelly not everywhere in the world ISP's support it :( and second - imagine scenario where you're connected via your mobile phone, which does roaming, and keeps you online , and also using 802.11x infrastructure (if it is available)
i know IP layer load balancing is much more effective, and i don't claim http load balancing will outperform it. is just handy sometimes. i.e. right now i have two modem lines, both @ different ISP's. both ISP's run their services without any mainteance, so forget about i.e. bonding them. you call to ISP , and you get automatic reply, or someone who don't know computers at all. second thing is that each connection is located in different place. when using simple download accelerator and 2 to three connections i get twice speed without incresed overhead, and any problems. if one line fails, download is continued over second line. i will have access to at least four such connections. On Monday 11 August 2003 07:48, Robert Collins wrote: > Bob, seems to me you are missing the point of network load balancing. > Someone with 10 modem lines should have their ISP performing load > balancing and redundancy at a IP level, not by manual load balancing. > > This form of 'acceleration' dramatically increases the overhead for web > servers - i.e. checking databases, logging requests, checking access > control lists. > > The act of transmission is only one part of the load involved in > handling a request, and these 'accelerators' -only- share that part of > the load, everything else is duplicated and wasted. > > There is a place for swarming - but not in the client-server model of > HTTP. Things like gnutella, where swarming is a part of the protocol, > are an appropriate place.... and if someone with 10 modem lines wants to > use application level load balancing for static file downloads, gnutella > is probably an ideal tool - for them. > > Rob -- --