Round Robin DNS

Any pointers for using round robin to load balance?

[bean5403]

How do you set up round robin for load balancing? I use an inexpensive domain registrar. They don't seem to offer round robin. Does the domain name need to be at a registrar that is more high-end or closer to the backbone (or whatever the term is)?

Once the multiple primary dns entries are typed in and resolved for the domain, are site visitors randomly sent about 50% to one site and 50% to the other mirrored site? In the event that one of the sites is slow or down completely, do you go in and delete that dns entry until the problem resolves or do the visitors automatically get routed 100% to the other site?

If this is a repetitive question, I would appreciate if anyone can point me to old posts. Also, if anyone can recommend registrars, if a certain type of registrar is needed, I would appreciate help with that, too! (Via sticky mail is fine if posting URLs is a problem.)

[richlowe]

I haven't found a registrar or host, excluding the very expensive ones, which support this. To get round robin I believe you pretty much need to run your own DNS server. It's pretty trivial on Windows 2000 DNS, don't now about others. I've only done it on our local corporate intranet, never on the web.

Richard Lowe

[trillianjedi]

It's also pretty trivial on linux.

You don't need your own DNS, you can port forward to the relevant machine based on load. But you will need a couple of dedicated PC's in the rack.

TJ