Replies to post #28037 on The Question and Answer Board (IHUB)

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Got a URL?

I care what it costs. Definitely the easiest way is to use a Load Balancer that will maintain session state itself or at least make sure the user always lands on the same webserver. Even AOLers, whose IP address can change 100 times in 100 page views. The built in NLB in Windows can't do the job because of too-dynamic AOL addressing. But if I do the software conversion, NLB is more than enough. And ad-serving needs to be moved onto a separate box. It's a lot of overhead. Our webserver is not only doing webserving for iHub pages, it handles nearly all of the ad-serving for both sites.

Keep in mind that whatever I spend on a load balancer is on top of what I'd spend on another webserver.