4.1 Accelerating Web Servers

This section covers the following topics:

4.1.1 Overview of Web Server Acceleration

The proxy server's origin Web server accelerator relies on DNS causing the accelerator to receive requests originally targeted at the origin Web server. The Web server accelerator handles the requests, accessing the origin Web server only when needed objects are not cached.

4.1.2 How Origin Web Server Acceleration Works

The mechanism for routing browser requests meant for Web servers to the Web server accelerator instead can be summarized as follows:

  • Without acceleration, DNS resolves the origin Web server's DNS name to the origin server's IP address.

  • With acceleration, DNS resolves the server's name to the IP address of Novell® iChain® Proxy Server Web server accelerator (reverse proxy) service.

Figure 4-1 Web Server Acceleration

  1. A browser on the Web requests an origin Web server Web page. This generates a request to DNS for the numeric IP address of the Web server.

  2. Instead of returning the origin Web server's numeric IP address, DNS returns the numeric IP address, of the accelerator service on the proxy server.

  3. The browser requests the Web page using the numeric IP address of the accelerator service.

  4. The accelerator service obtains the Web page objects from the origin Web server.

  5. The accelerator returns copies of the objects to the browser.

4.1.3 Benefits of Origin Web Server Acceleration

  • A Web server accelerator reduces response time to browser requests and frees up origin Web server bandwidth, allowing it to handle requests for less frequently requested, uncached data much more quickly.

  • The proxy server can accelerate origin Web servers at remote locations that don't offer broadband connections. The Web server accelerator can be located close to the Internet backbone, delivering high-speed access to browsers for all cached objects. The connection to the origin Web server is then used for transporting only those objects not already in cache.

For tips and guidelines on setting up origin Web server accelerators, see Section 4.2, Web Server Accelerator Setup.

The procedure for configuring DNS to work with Web server accelerators is explained in Working with DNS.