Application Delivery
Senclo provides a suite of technologies that, when deployed together, provide application availability, security, and acceleration. At the core of an ADN is the Application Delivery Controller (ADC), an advanced traffic management device that is often also referred to as a web switch, content switch, or multilayer switch, the purpose of which is to distribute traffic among a number of servers or geographically dislocated sites based on application specific criterion.
The ADN evolved from layer 4-7 switches in the late 1990s when it became apparent that traditional load balancing techniques were not robust enough to handle the increasingly complex mix of application traffic being delivered over a wider variety of network connectivity options.
The Internet was designed according to the end-to-end principle [1]. This principle keeps the core network relatively simple and moves the intelligence as much as possible to the network end-points: the hosts and clients. An Application Delivery Network (ADN) enhances the delivery of applications across the Internet by employing a number of techniques designed to optimize the delivery of applications. Many of these techniques are based on established best-practices employed to efficiently route traffic at the network layer including redundancy and load balancing [2]
In theory, an Application Delivery Network (ADN) is closely related to a content delivery network. The difference between the two delivery networks lies in the intelligence of the ADN to understand and optimize applications, usually referred to as application fluency [3].
Application delivery uses one or more layer 4–7 switches, also known as a web switch, content switch, or multilayer switch to intelligently distribute traffic to a pool, also known as a cluster or farm, of servers. The application delivery controller (ADC) is assigned a single virtual IP address (VIP) that represents the pool of servers. Traffic arriving at the ADC is then directed to one of the real web servers based on a number of factors including application specific data values, application transport protocol, availability of servers, current performance metrics, and client-specific parameters. An ADN provides the advantages of load distribution, increase in capacity of servers, improved scalability, security, and increased reliability through application specific health checks.
Increasingly the ADN comprises a redundant pair of ADC on which is integrated a number of different feature sets designed to provide security, availability, reliability, and acceleration functions. In some cases these devices are still separate entities, deployed together as a network of devices through which application traffic is delivered, each providing specific functionality that enhances the delivery of the application.
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