Posted by Centurion on 06/27/05 01:11

jollyrogership@yahoo.com wrote:

> Hello!
>
> You know how yahoo has thousands of servers, but you only ever see
> "yahoo.com/..." in the browser window?
>
> I'd like to do the same thing, so as to avoid sub domains such as
> g1.gallery.com,
> g2.gallery.com, etc
>
> so that everything is just at gallery.com.
>
> How do the big guys do it?

Probably the same way our company does it: big, expensive load balancers
(>USD$15,000 each....and we've got about 10 of them).

To achieve what you want you're going to need a "director" of some sort that
can interpret a HTTP request then direct that request to the correct
server/IP. Your external DNS will point "gallery.com" to the director
which will then distribute the work load based on the requested content.
This is usually done with load balancers or firewalls/routers/switches with
high layer[1] packet inspection - none of that level of equipment come
cheap.

Cheers,

James
[1] as in "OSI model" layer 4+
--
IBM's original motto:
Cogito ergo vendo; vendo ergo sum.

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