RFC 1794 (rfc1794) - Page 1 of 7
DNS Support for Load Balancing
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group T. Brisco
Request for Comments: 1794 Rutgers University
Category: Informational April 1995
DNS Support for Load Balancing
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo
does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of
this memo is unlimited.
1. Introduction
This RFC is meant to first chronicle a foray into the IETF DNS
Working Group, discuss other possible alternatives to
provide/simulate load balancing support for DNS, and to provide an
ultimate, flexible solution for providing DNS support for balancing
loads of many types.
2. History
The history of this probably dates back well before my own time - so
undoubtedly some holes are here. Hopefully they can be filled in by
other authors.
Initially; "load balancing" was intended to permit the Domain Name
System (DNS) [1] agents to support the concept of "clusters" (derived
from the VMS usage) of machines - where all machines were
functionally similar or the same, and it didn't particularly matter
which machine was picked - as long as the load of the processing was
reasonably well distributed across a series of actual different
hosts. Around 1986 a number of different schemes started surfacing
as hacks to the Berkeley Internet Name Domain server (BIND)
distribution. Probably the most widely distributed of these were the
"Shuffle Address" (SA) modifications by Bryan Beecher, or possibly
Marshall Rose's "Round Robin" code.
The SA records, however, did a round-robin ordering of the Address
resource records, and didn't do much with regard to the particular
loads on the target machines. Matt Madison (of TGV) implemented some
changes that used VMS facilities to review the system loads, and
return A RRs in the order of least-loaded to most loaded.
The problem was with SAs was that load was not actually a factor, and
TGV's relied on VMS specific facilities to order the records. The SA
RRs required changes to the DNS specification (in file syntax and in
Brisco