Active anycast method for server load balancing

In a network where geographically dispersed replicated servers offer the same service to a large number of clients, requests tend to concentrate at only a few of these servers, causing congestion in the network around them. A server load balancing method based on the active anycast service has been proposed to alleviate the problem. In this method, an anycast address is used to represent the group of servers and active networking provides the means to select and deliver requests to the selected server with the overall objective of balancing the load on each server. Active networking allows a router to make decisions in selecting the appropriate server based on load information of all servers and by subsequently changing the anycast address to the unicast address of the selected server. This paper presents preliminary performance results which give an idea of the efficiency of the proposed service.