User Guide

Techniques for Creating Scalable and Highly Available Sites 241
The following figure shows a router distributing requests in round-robin fashion to
the available servers in a Web server cluster:
Advantages
A hardware-based clustering solution, such as a router, is an attractive solution for
the following reasons:
• Proven technology
• Relatively low complexity
• No recurrent licensing fees
• Semi-intelligent
Routers can load balance in a round-robin fashion, detect failures, redirect traffic
and remove failed servers from a cluster.
Note
Not all load-balancing devices have the same features or offer the same capabilities.