>>>>> "James" == James Gregory <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:


>> 2. Servers must be physically located on different campuses -
>> because we connect tot he 'net through AARNET, we want them on
>> different RNO's.
>> 
>> 3. There must be NO DISCERNABLE INTERRUPTION TO SERVICE when one
>> fails. Doing a "shift-reload" in the browser is NOT an option. It
>> must be TOTALLY TRANSPARENT.

James> Wow. Well, point 3 makes it pretty hard. As I understand it,
James> that's an intentional design decision of tcp/ip -- if it were
James> easy to have another computer interrupt an existing tcp
James> connection and just take it over, then I'm sure it would be

If you're only serving static content, that's not an issue:  HTTP
version 1 uses a new tcp/ip connexion for each request anyway,
With round-robin DNS you may end up with different images on the same
page being served from different servers anyway.

Personally I'd go with round-robin DNS, and try to detect failure and
update the DNS fast.  Some people's browsers would appear to hang
for a short while when attempting to access the next page, until the
DNS caught up (this implies using a short timeout on the name).


Peter C
-- 
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug

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