Web hosting services provide access to their server farms on behalf of large numbers of different customers. The users who connect to the Web sites of those customers drive the comsumption of a variety of resources, like network bandwidth, that are shared by the entire server farm, sometimes to the advantage of one customer's Web site and the detriment of others. A system has been devised that uses a front-end controller to monitor and throttle traffic, as necessary, to avoid such problems. Once contention for resources is detected, the controller uses admission controls to avoid overloads. It will also slow down delivery of data on individual network connections, if necessary.
Network traffic passes through this controller only when it arrives at the server farm, not when it leaves, and the control system requires no changes to the software on the servers themselves. These factors
create problems in establishing control of the traffic, and the servers. At the same time, they reduce the load on the front-end controller and its performance impact on the system as a whole.
By: Richard P. King, Junehwa Song, Daniel M. Dias
Published in: RC21881 in 2000
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