Subject: RE: New idea in TCP

From: #PATHIK GUPTA# <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 12:39:25 +0800

-----Original Message-----
From: #PATHIK GUPTA#
To: 'R.Z. Pan'
Sent: 4/2/01 5:35 PM
Subject: RE: New idea in TCP

Hi,

The HTTP protocol is a protocol layer that resides on top of the TCP
layer. In a 4 layered TCP/IP stack, it resides on the 4 layer which is
the application layer. What you are suggesting is to provide a
functionality available in a application layer into the Transport layer.
If this is done, then the whole concept of layered architecture becomes
useless. Also think about that extra bit the TCP has to carry always
even if it is not used. 
Now a days, big companies like Cisco are talking about layer 4 switching
which has the idea of Load balancing etc at the TCP layer (4 layer of
OSI). but that requires that the end router be configured to examine the
TCP layer to get the type of protocol and the urgency of that
protocol(RTP may be more urgent that HTTP or something like that). SO
the end router in that way perform the load balancing by polling the
servers and routing packets accordingly.

Regards
Pathik Gupta

-----Original Message-----
From: R.Z. Pan [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2001 2:44 PM
To: IETF
Subject: New idea in TCP

Hi, all:
  I'm a newbie from P.R.China and I do some load balance stuffs. I
noticed
that HTTP Protocol has a redirection mechanism to lead user to another
web
site. Why TCP Protocol don't use this redirection mechanism to implement
load balancing? In my opinion, the process would be like:
                   SYN
User           ------------>       Load Balancer

                Redirection
Load Balancer  ------------>       User
               Best Server's IP

                   SYN
User          ------------->       Best Server

                   SYN
Best Server   ------------->       User
            ACK

                   ACK
User         -------------->       Best Server

The "Best Server" is one of the load server that be choiced by the Load
Balancer

To implement this, TCP Protocol should add one "redirect" bits. Data
with a
redirection control bit we called it a redirection data, the redirection
IP
address packed in the "Options" section of the TCP Header. For the TCP
data
bring us the port number, so we can also dispatch the job according to
the
port. I think load balancing can be resolved by the Operation System in
this
way.
Is this a nonsense or a good idea? Please give me a advice. Thanks for
your
attention!