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Virtual Servers (Load Balancing)

Since the notion of a virtual server gets used in a variety of ways, here it means to have an IP that represents the virtual server, for which there is no real device to which this IP belongs to, and several other IPs, for each of which there is a real device. When a host connects to the virtual IP the NAT device exchanges the destination address, which is the virtual IP, against an IP of one of the real devices. Depending on the algorithm that is used to select the (real) server IP, virtual servers can serve various purposes.

Example:


next up previous contents
Next: Load Balancing Up: Other NAT Techniques Previous: Other NAT Techniques
Michael Hasenstein
8/22/1997