[gerdesj]

HA Proxy has been doing this sort of thing for a very, very long time.

You have stick tables and a very rich way of populating them and then you can use these tables of in RAM data to make routing decisions.

Sometimes you need another proxy too - eg Apache/nginx or whatever, perhaps for authn/authz.

Yes it is a tricky concept and this series of articles merely scratches the surface. Good effort though.

[miggy]

Author here. Absolutely, HAProxy’s sticktables is a powerful way to implement advanced routing logic, and they’ve been around for years. This series focuses on explaining the broader concepts and tradeoffs rather than diving deep into any single implementation, and since it also covers other aspects of reverse proxies, the focus on load balancing here is mostly to present the challenges and high-level ideas.

Glad you found it a good effort, and I agree there’s room to go deeper in future posts.

[gerdesj]

"Common load balancing algoithims and challenges"

algorithms is pretty hard as a spelling: its derived from something like Al Gorism - the name of an Arab chap who documented an early notion. By the time English has decided to create a word, you can be sure it will be ... painful!

Keep going mate, you have a great writing style and presentation.