Methods for geotargeting redirection in corporate wide area networks

In business organizations, particularly large ones, it is sometimes necessary to manage web users according to their geographic location. Final destination can be either business related web site or web application server. Such redirection can be accomplished in numerous ways. The choice depends on a goal one want to achieve: distribution of user load to optimal site, achieving high availability or both. Several interesting methods suitable for geographically dispersed clusters of web (and application) servers are presented and analyzed. This includes client side scripts, server side scripts, load balancers, multiple DNS records as well as combinations of these techniques. Reviewed methods are compared and their benefits and shortcomings are discussed.