GeoLocation - Explained
Geolocation refers to the method of identifying the actual Geographical location of a Computer on the internet or a visitor on your site or even the a mobile device. With reference to Hosting Clusters, we mostly trace the geographical location of the website visitors. There can be various procedures used to track down the geographical location of the visitors some of which are:
Internet Protocol Address (IP Address) Lookup:
This is the most common procedure we use on our setups. The visitors are traced on the basis of the whois lookups done to their current IP address. These lookups are automated, real-time and are implemented using special server side modules or even third party lookup services. These lookups can provide the most accurate locations of the visitors as these IP whois databases can always have updates.
Media Access Control Address (MAC Address):
Media Access Control or MAC addresses is an Unique Identifier assigned to most network adapters or Ethernet Cards by their Manufacturer. It contains a combination of the manufacturer’s unique Identification number and some other codes to generate an unique MAC address for the physical device. The location of this device can be traced based on the Sales data for the manufacturer or some other similar methods.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID):
Radio Frequency Identification or RFID uses Radio waves to transmit data with the help of devices like Transponders. RFID does not have much applications on internet related geolocation but it has wide uses in corporate and enterprise supply chain management systems for inventory tracking and other applications.
Global Positioning System (GPS):
Global Positioning System or GPS uses different Artificial Satellites to interpret the microwave signals obtained from certain GPS enabled mobile devices to calculate the exact geographical location of the device. The device receives this interpreted data which it can use to locate itself and obtain navigation instructions for a particular destination from its current location.
The IP whois lookup method is the most commonly used method for clusters. We will study the exact implementation of this technique in the actual case studies we will be releasing soon.
Site Design Tips for Websites which use RRDNS
Websites which need to be hosted on a Round Robin Environment are usually high traffic websites. It is very important for them to maintain functionality as well as a good site speed to be able retain their traffic . Site design can play a very important part to maximise the performance of a clustered hosting environment for such sites.
Although the design changes or tweaks depend on the type of site you have or are building but we will just try and touch base to some of the major points that can be taken into consideration during the site design phase for hosting it on a cluster. We will be adding some case studies later on our site for particular types of sites we have hosted and their design changes we implemented for optimal performance. The general tweaks would be as below :
1. Distribution of static and Dynamic Content
The site design can be done in such a way that there is scope to distribute static and dynamic content to different servers. Use of subdomain paths on the is a method which is helpful to achieve such distribution.
2. Prevention of Excessive Remote Includes
URL includes from the site to its own URLs causes and increase in the http traffic. This needs to be avoided as far as possible so that http does not have heavy traffic from the server itself.
3. Mysql Based Session Management
Websites which require sessions need to use mysql based sessions in order to maintain proper sessions on the site. The session mechanism can use a different mysql server if needed as well.
We will elaborate more on each of these points with examples in the case studies we will be posting.
Technical Terms
We will be using a lot of technical terms on this site both in our tutorials and in the normal content as well. So we thought of adding a post explaining all these terms in brief. Following are some of the internet definitions of the terms we will be using.
DNS: DNS is the short name used for Domain Name System (or Service or Server). This is an Internet service which translates domain names into IP addresses.
FQDN: Fully Qualified Domain Name. This is the fully resolvable DNS name for any server on a network.
Network: A group of computers or devices connected to each other is called a network.
Server: A server is a computer or device on a network which manages network resources. Like file server just stores files which a web server handles web requests.
Node: A node is a server or device on a complex network which is commissioned to a specific job on the network.
Load Balancing: Distribution of network traffic evenly across multiple nodes on a network is
called as load balancing.
Fault Tolerance: A systems ability to react and implement auto corrective measures when a fault it detected on one of its components is called as fault tolerance.
Server Clusters: Connecting two or more servers/nodes together to perform a single task form clusters. Clusters are used for Load Balancing
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