What is Inbound Load Balancing (ILB) & Outbound Load Balancing?
Inbound Load Balancing operates by processing traffic activity from remote users who are requesting information from your local network. Multiple communication channels are utilized for increased bandwidth to accommodate numerous sessions by remote users accessing the network and retrieving requested information. ILB provides tremendous benefits for networks that operate as primary information centers such as web hosting, E-Mail services, FTP servers, online web stores, or any networking application that serves numerous incoming requests to a network.
Most networks with Load Balancing capabilities benefit their local users when processing outbound information requests. This setup, inversely is known as Outbound Load Balancing, efficiently uses the local network's available bandwidth to best serve its users that request information from other networks.
What is Load Balancing or LB?
Load balancing is a method of efficiently processing data evenly across different networks so no single communications channel is overwhelmed. This method is achieved when using two or more channels such as ISDN, broadband, and/or T1 leased lines working concurrently with each other to provide increased bandwidth for a network of users. By distributing outbound requests evenly between the communication channels, the load balancing process efficiently utilizes the two channels' bandwidth to accommodate high influxes of data throughput and minimizes traffic congestion within a network.
Load Balancing or LB provides the additional benefit of redundancy with a process known as Automatic Failover. In the event of one communication channel failing, the remaining channels continue to serve users and minimizes down time for the network. Redundant connectivity provides a tremendous advantage to a classic network setup involving one communication channel. One channel equals a single point of failure. Businesses that rely on their network communication channel for their services stand vulnerable to potential revenue loss in the event of a failure occurring.
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Indicates a live connection from the Internet service Provider (ISP) |
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Indicates an inactive connection. |
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Twin WAN router or gateway in normal operation with two live ISP connections plugged into each WAN port. |
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When a connection is dropped from one of the ISPs, the Twin WAN router automatically failsover all traffic to the second live connection. |
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ILB Features and Twin WAN Product Line - Low Cost IT Solutions:
XiNCOM's XC-DPG603 is a Twin WAN Gateway that provides a low cost IT solution to these Enterprise features of ILB and connection redundancy. The XC-DPG603 has a built-in Authoritative Domain Name Server that processes incoming sessions to a network. This increases available bandwidth for both uploads and download requests when load balancing with two concurrent broadband connections.
Function of the built-in Authoritative DNS:
Every Web, FTP or Email server requires an Authoritative Domain Name Server to route the domain name to the respective IP address or multiple IP addresses. Using the XC-DPG603 as an authoritative DNS gives the network administrator the ability to easily create and manage extra domain names. This provides a web site with expanded bandwidth and redundancy via auto fail over in case a single Internet connection fails.
The DNS Configuration is a major part of the XC-DPG603. By acting as an authoritative name server, it is able to serve the incoming requests on UDP port 53 (DNS port) and provide the IP address of the web server. The XC-DPG603 manipulates the last step based on a few factors such as current bandwidth, LB type and load share percentage ( Advanced Port => LB menu ).
When a request comes in to your domain name, the XC-DPG603 looks at these factors to determine which WAN port should be used to access the server. When the traffic load is higher on WAN 1, the XC-DPG603 will reply with the IP address of WAN2, in which case the user will connect to WAN 2 allowing for the best latency and speed.
The XiNCOM XC-DPG603 is capable of handling up to 10 domain names in such manner, giving you the ability to provide hosting services with automatic failover and ILB (Check your Internet Service Provider's service agreement before hosting any content on your connections). |
