NAME

     fair — simple TCP load balancing service

DESCRIPTION

     fair is a load balancer for TCP connections.  It can be used to distribute incoming
     connections for SMTP, HTTP or any other TCP service to multiple hosts, distributing the load
     as evenly as possible.

     fair consists of two daemons.  The carrousel is the front-end; it keeps track of back-end
     hosts and their status, and forwards incoming connections to the back-ends in such a way
     that the load is distributed fairly.  The transponder runs on the back-end hosts, it
     registers with the carrousel and sends it status information.  The TCP connections forwarded
     by the carrousel are not sent to the transponder daemons but are sent directly to the
     desired service running on the back-end host. Both daemons share a single configuration
     file.

EXAMPLES

     The following example shows how to set up fair to service HTTP connections and to distribute
     them over back-ends in the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet.

     The configuration file /etc/fair.conf contains the following:

           WorkerService = http
           BalancerService = http
           AllowUDP = ^192.168.1.[0-9]+$

     On www.example.com, the front-end server receiving the incoming HTTP connections, just run:

           carrousel

     On each of the back-ends run:

           transponder www.example.com

SEE ALSO

     carrousel(8), transponder(8), fair.conf(5)