Subject: [dispatch] SIP Load Balancing

From: "Vijay K. Gurbani" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:39:52 -0600

Folks: During the summer IETF (Quebec City, summer 2011) there was a
discussion on SIP load balancing [1].

The general hum indicated that folks consider this work important
enough to be at least looked at by the IETF, especially given gear
from different vendors and the need to perform feedback-based
load balancing.

The details of what "this work" entails need to be fleshed out.
For instance, there were good discussions on whether signaling-
only and media-based servers needed different load balancing
techniques, and what exactly needs standardization here.

Robert rightly suggested that having a document describing
existing SIP load balancing techniques would be a good first step to
seeing what work needs to be done here.

So, responding to that starting point, Partha, Paul and I have put
together the beginnings of a survey document that looks at
various techniques whereby load balancing is done today [2].  The work
is not complete, but a good start towards getting a document that
describes different techniques in use today.

We will like to start a larger discussion on the survey document
to see if we have adequately captured the different ways to do
load balancing today.  Our hope is that this work will serve
as input to the questions of exactly what should be standardized.
To that extent, we kindly solicit your comments and thoughts on
the survey draft.

Thanks,

[1] http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/81/minutes/dispatch.txt
[2] 
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-partha-dispatch-siploadbalancing-survey-00

- vijay
-- 
Vijay K. Gurbani, Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent
1960 Lucent Lane, Rm. 9C-533, Naperville, Illinois 60566 (USA)
Email: vkg@{bell-labs.com,acm.org} / [email-masked]
Web:   http://ect.bell-labs.com/who/vkg/