User's Manual

Chapter 1
11 Avaya P330 Load Balancing Manager User Guide
Benefits of AR
By redirecting client requests to a local cache or application server, you
can increase the speed at which clients access information and free up
valuable network bandwidth.
Application Redirection improves network performance by:
• Providing faster client access to information.
• Increasing effective network bandwidth.
• Filtering traffic.
• Directing only suitable traffic to the local cache.
• Connecting and load balancing multiple caches.
• Performing the redirection process in a way that is transparent to
the client.
• Allowing redundant caches to be configured.
Cache Redirection
For Cache Redirection, the load balancer is positioned on the traffic
route and redirects traffic from the original destination to an alternative
cache server. The redirection process involves the following steps:
1. The load balancer checks whether the packet characteristics
comply with one of the defined filter rules. The user configures
rules to define which clients or destinations are to be redirected to
the cache.
2. The load balancer checks whether the application port is suitable
for redirection (i.e., HTTP).
3. The load balancer routes the packet to the cache server instead of
to the original destination on the Internet.
4. The cache checks if it has the relevant information. If it does, it
forwards the cached information to the client. If it does not have
the information, it retrieves the information from the Internet,
saves it to the cache, and then forwards the information to the
client.
The load balancer supports transparent caches. A transparent cache is a
cache that is capable of accepting packets not addressed to its IP address.
The cache usually uses NAT in its IP address stack, so the higher layers
can process packets not addressed to the cache’s IP address.