The measurement of an optimum load balancing algorithm in a master/slave architecture

Abstract

Identifying the optimum load balancing algorithm for a web site is a difficult and complex task. This paper examines a number of simulated algorithms based on a master/slave architecture. Three algorithms are used in order to have comparable results to discuss. The first algorithm is the use of a master/slave architecture and processing requests to the relevant servers as a batch of requests. The second algorithm investigated is the standard round robin algorithm used in a master/slave architecture. The final algorithm proposed in the paper is the use of a master/slave architecture that uses the round robin algorithm combined with a reverse proxy of requests. The use of this final combination of algorithms has showed a performance improvement of 19% over conventional master/slave round robin load balancing. The use of batch processing of request shows some interesting findings useful for very heavily loaded web sites with a constant high umber of requests. © Springer-Verlag 2004.