Management system support for configurable and efficient layer-7 routing

Service replication on the server cluster is becoming increasingly important and widespread as the explosive growth of the Web is straining the architecture of many Internet sites. Layer-7 routing (also known as content-aware routing), routing packets based on requested content, has been recognized as a powerful approach to distribute workload among these server farms. However, managing a server cluster with the layer-7 routing mechanism faces numerous challenges. This paper presents a management system that can support a configurable and high-performance layer-7 routing system. In the proposed system, we devise a data structure termed URL table to hold content-related information for making content-aware routing decisions. We also propose a novel idea termed "URL formalization" that provides an efficient solution to speedup the content-aware request routing. The proposed mechanisms are integrated into a management system, which provides a specification interface and enforcement mechanisms so that the system policy can be specified and enforced.