Decentralized Load Balancing Across Branch Office Appliances
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Solution Overview
Problem
In corporate networks, branch office appliances require manual configuration to access resources across other branch offices, leading to inefficient use of resources and high configuration and maintenance costs due to the lack of decentralized dynamic load balancing.
Innovation Solution
A method and system for decentralized dynamic load balancing among appliances, where each appliance determines the number of available services, communicates with other appliances to assess service availability, and assigns weights to forward requests accordingly, optimizing resource utilization across the network.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If manual configuration is used to enable branch office appliances to access resources across other branch offices, then resource accessibility is achieved, but configuration time and maintenance costs increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables appliances to automatically discover and configure access to resources across branch offices without manual administrator intervention. Each appliance autonomously publishes its available services and receives requests from other appliances, eliminating the need for manual configuration while maintaining reliable resource accessibility throughout the corporate network.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements a feedback mechanism where appliances continuously publish their available services and receive requests from other appliances. This automated feedback loop enables dynamic discovery and configuration of resource access paths, allowing the system to adapt to changing network conditions without manual reconfiguration.
2Reliability
If manual configuration is performed for each branch office appliance to know of other appliances, then inter-site resource access is enabled, but device complexity and maintenance burden increase
Solution Approach 1:
Each appliance automatically publishes its available services and receives requests from other appliances without requiring manual configuration. This self-service mechanism simplifies the system while maintaining reliable inter-site resource access, as appliances autonomously manage their own configuration and discovery.
Solution Approach 2:
The system employs a universal service publication and discovery mechanism that works across all branch offices. A single standardized protocol enables any appliance to access any resource across the corporate network, eliminating the need for site-specific configuration complexity while maintaining comprehensive resource accessibility.
3Adaptability or versatility
If resources are deployed across multiple branch offices, then service availability increases, but configuration and maintenance costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables resources deployed across multiple branch offices to be automatically discovered and accessed without proportionally increasing configuration costs. Appliances autonomously publish their services and handle request routing, allowing the system to scale resources across sites without linear increases in administrative overhead.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements dynamic service publication and request routing that adapts to the deployment architecture. As resources are added to new branch offices, the system automatically integrates them into the service discovery network, enabling flexible scaling of service availability without proportionally increasing configuration complexity or cost.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for enabling decentralized dynamic load balancing among a plurality of appliances providing access to a plurality of sites, each site comprising a local area network and at least one server includes: determining, by a first appliance, a first number of services currently available for access via a local area network connected to the first appliance; receiving, by the first appliance from a second appliance, a communication indicating a second number of services currently available for access via a local area network connected to the second appliance; receiving, by the first appliance, a plurality of requests to connect to a service; determining, by the first appliance, a weight to be assigned to the second appliance, wherein the determination is responsive to the second number; and forwarding, by the first appliance to the second appliance, a subset of the plurality of requests, wherein the number of requests comprising the subset is determined in response to the determined weight. Corresponding systems are also described.