Someone more knowledgeable will have to answer, but I figured I'd
step forward in the meanwhile and offer some ideas of where to explore.
I think I came across something like this awhile back and I think the
solution relates to DNS. Something having to do with mapping the domain
name to two ip addresses. That way if one isn't available, the client is
routed to the other. I think it had something allowing you to prioritize
the traffic so you can have both servers online and serving people. If
one goes down, the other takes all the traffic, otherwise they both
share it.
This is all from memory. It could just be a cool dream I had ;) I
hope it helps tho =)
-Ed
At 09:07 PM 11/9/2000 -0700, you wrote:
>I'm not sure if this is really off topic or just something that does not
>often come up. I was going to include the perl list but then I realized
>that the code language was irrelevant it is a logistical problem.
>
>I have a hosted web site and wish to set up an identical web site but as
>an alternative. This way there is no single point of failure that can
>take out both hosted web sites. This means one must be on a different
>telco (ISP) than the other and neither can be tied to a server
>installation that has the same power provider and that sort of thing.
>Plus they probably should be in different parts of the country sort of
>like mirrors in order to reduce internet traffic congestion. Of course
>all this I can arrange by choosing 2 web hosting companies sufficiently
>separated in this regard.
>
>The problem is this. The primary host web site must be able to ping the
>alternative and vice versa. This is a simple matter using a batch
>process in both so each knows the other is up or one is down. Of course
>if the primary is down the alternative assumes the role of primary until
>the original primary is back up. Since the virtual web server cannot
>make these kind of decisions, when to offload users, it must be done as
>a CGI process and that process must check the up or down status of the
>other. So already, I have introduced overhead at a CGI level of
>operation just to determine whether a user should be offloaded to the
>alternate site.
>
>In order for this to even work it appears that the primary must have the
>advertised domain name and the alternative must have an unadvertised
>domain name and so is not directly accessible by users. They point
>their browsers to the primary domain name and the CGI process at that
>virtual server must somehow redirect if by some measure of activity it
>deems that browser should be offloaded to the alternate site. The
>easiest solution I can come up with to effect this kind of operation is
>to have the CGI process generate the HOME page for the advertised
>primary domain name but if off loading is required the URLs on that HOME
>page point to the unadvertised domain name location.
>
>This is all fine except when the primary hosted web site dies. Now no
>browser can get to the unadvertised alternative domain name because it
>is not known. So this is the dilemna. How does the alternative hosted
>web site make itself look like the primarly hosted web site when the
>primary web site is down?
>
>Maybe someone has an entirely different approach to this kind of
>coupling.
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