Switches combine the features of an appliance server with an Ethernet switch for faster throughput and simplified management. Theoretically, they are the most robust, but your Internet connection will likely clog before you stress the capacity of any of these systems. All of the products in our roundup can use a variety of methods to determine where to send traffic. These include server CPU load, response time, number of current server connections, and content type. Content-type balancing provides an extra level of flexibility in that it allows the load balancer to send requests for a specific file type to a specific server.
Persistent sessions are especially important for e-commerce applications.
Overall, a combination of careful component selection and network architecture design can create a Web site configuration that won't let you down. Les Freed is a contributing editor of PC Magazine . Rich Santalesa is a frequent contributor. Frank J. Derfler, Jr., is the senior networking editor. Associate editor Davis D. Janowski and PC Magazine Labs project leader Russ Iwanchuk were in charge of this story.