IPv6 Load Balancer

[Tore Anderson]

Hi,

* Bertrand Yvain

> Sure... but those load-balancing proxies are just that: proxies.

I'm not sure what you trying to say.  Most load-balancing solutions sits
in front of the application servers and proxy the incoming requests to
them.  The only common form of load-balancing that does not proxy
requests that I can think of right now is round-robin DNS.

> IMHO, load balancers should do NAT or direct routing so that real
> servers do receive source IP address and port number.

Some people want that, sure.  Some people don't - that way the load
balancer doesn't have to also operate as a default gateway for the
servers.  Some people (read: me) also really like the opportunity to
proxy the requests from one IP version to another, which makes it really
easy to provide IPv6 service since only the load balancers needs to have
any idea of what IPv6 is - everything behind them can continue to speak
IPv4.  In this case, the source address can obviously not be retained.
But as Jeroen pointed out, you can put it into an X-Forwarded-For header
in the HTTP case, at least.

In any case, all of these modes of operation are supported by both
HAProxy and F5 BIG-IP LTM boxes, so you'll have to look at the rest of
the feature set, and obviously your budget, when deciding which one you
want.

Best regards,
-- 
Tore Anderson
Redpill Linpro AS - http://www.redpill-linpro.com/
Tel: +47 21 54 41 27