Re: Wide area caches

How about this simple scheme:

Dedicate a special cache IP address for your cache, and use static
routes to direct the traffic to the appropriate cache server. Then use a
virtual IP interface to get the host to accept the traffic.

If you need to load balance on several caches at some points in your
network, then use a IP range, DNS round-robin, and multiple static
routes (one for each load share of the IP range)..

This even gives some crash reduncandy for free. If the cache host
crashes the router detects this (after at most a ARP cache timeout) and
uses the next route based on route metrics. It is not a graceful
switch-over but it is free. Graceful switch-over requires a TCP
redirector and can't be implemented at the IP level.

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Henrik Nordström
Sparetime Squid Hacker