[AusNOG] Experiences with web load balancers

[Michael Richardson]

Hi list,

We've all been so political lately... maybe this will help get some
technical talk back up in the list...

I'm wondering if anyone would be able to make some recommendations on their
experiences with web-farm load balancers. In a previous job I'd installed
and configured some Cisco ACE 4710s, and found them to be pretty solid, but
now I'm in the market to buy some more and I'm wondering if there are better
options out there. I'm a CCNP, so I'm leaning towards Cisco, but the 4710s
aren't really Cisco boxes anyway, just re-badged Arrowpoints.

Specific features I'm looking for include:

   - Thousands of requests/second (ASIC-based logic for forwarding would be
   ideal)
   - Translation of internal NATted addresses to external real addresses
   (while still handling lots and lots of requests at/near wire-speed)
   - SSL offloading
   - Content acceleration
   - Fault tolerance between multiple LBs

I'm hoping to get some feedback on good and bad experiences with different
vendors. Not to seem rude, but having sent emails to the list for advice
before, I feel the need to clarify that I'm not looking for quotes or sales
information; this is just an technical query for technical people.

Thanks everyone for your time!

Mike

P.S. Conroy is an idiot.
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