Multihoming and Path-Based Support

The Excelerator appliance can be configured as a Web server accelerator:

• The appliance can support multiple Web server accelerators, each of which has a unique IP address and/or port number.
• The appliance can support various configurations on each of these accelerators, as summarized below.

NOTE:  In the following descriptions, the term Web server farm refers to either a single Web server or a bank of mirrored Web servers.

No Multihoming: The Excelerator appliance accelerates a single, non-multihoming Web server farm that has one DNS name.

Host-Based Multihoming: The Excelerator appliance accelerates a single, multihoming Web server farm.

The Web server farm is configured to support multihoming (multiple DNS names). Both the appliance and the Web server farm use browser host headers to select the correct content. The appliance routes all fill traffic to this single Web server farm.

Appliance-Based Multihoming: The Excelerator appliance accelerates multiple, non-multihoming Web server farms, each of which has one unique DNS name.

The appliance uses browser host headers to select the correct cached content and to route fill requests to the correct Web server farm.

Path-Based Multihoming: The Excelerator appliance accelerates multiple, non-multihoming Web server farms from a single host name.

The appliance uses the path portion of the URL to select the correct cached content and to determine which Web server farm to fill content from.

Appliance-Based Path-Based Multihoming: The Excelerator appliance accelerates multiple, non-multihoming Web server farms.

The appliance uses both the hostname sent from the browser and the URL path to select the correct cached content and to determine which Web server farm to fill content from.

Path-based multihoming can be configured to use either the beginning or the ending portion of the path to select cached content and determine which Web server farm to fill content from.