dns based loadbalancing/failover

Sun Oct 7 05:14:24 UTC 2001

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On 
> Behalf Of Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu
> Sent: October 7, 2001 1:05 AM
> To: Mary Grace
> Cc: nanog at merit.edu
> Subject: Re: dns based loadbalancing/failover 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, 06 Oct 2001 16:44:57 EDT, Mary Grace said:
> > Hrmm, no, that is called "Akamai", isn't it?  :)
> 
> There's an Akamai across the hall from my office, and the way 
> it was explained to *me* was that the DNS always returns the 
> same IP address for a given Akamai'zed page (so the URLs in 
> the HTML are consistent), but routing games are used to 
> direct the packets to the appropriate server.  In other 
> words, it's one IP that points to disparate machines.

They lied to you (I don't remember who a96.g.akamai is; it's some
well-known Akamai customer, maybe CNN):
vivienm at quartz:~$ nslookup a96.g.akamai.net 
Server:  quartz.bos.dyndns.org
Address:  66.37.218.198

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    a96.g.akamai.net
Addresses:  216.32.119.10, 216.32.119.74

vivienm at quartz:~$ nslookup a96.g.akamai.net amethyst.ith.dyndns.org
Server:  amethyst.ith.dyndns.org
Address:  216.7.11.130

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    a96.g.akamai.net
Addresses:  207.127.111.70, 207.127.111.73

vivienm at nickel:~$ nslookup a96.g.akamai.net
Server:  zinc.fmt.dyndns.org
Address:  64.71.191.27

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    a96.g.akamai.net
Addresses:  64.21.49.15, 64.21.49.36

vivienm at lapis:~$ nslookup a96.g.akamai.net
Server:         212.100.224.10
Address:        212.100.224.10#53

Name:   a96.g.akamai.net
Address: 64.124.157.126
Name:   a96.g.akamai.net
Address: 64.124.157.91

[from my home box]

vivienm at deep:~$ nslookup a96.g.akamai.net
Server:  proxy1.slnt1.on.wave.home.com
Address:  24.112.33.4

Name:    a96.g.akamai.net
Addresses:  65.163.234.8, 65.163.234.24

[from one of your DNS servers]
vivienm at quartz:~$ nslookup a96.g.akamai.net milo.cns.vt.edu
Server:  milo.cns.vt.edu
Address:  198.82.247.98

Name:    a96.g.akamai.net
Addresses:  198.82.164.48, 198.82.164.40

I'm sure I could keep going if you really wanted, but I think that's
enough to prove the point...

Vivien

-- 
Vivien M.
vivienm at dyndns.org
Assistant System Administrator
Dynamic DNS Network Services
http://www.dyndns.org/