Geographic Proxy Bandwidth Usage

[Marcus Clyne]

Cliff Wells wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-07-31 at 12:42 -0400, ktwalrus wrote:
>   
>> This is probably a stupid question, but when I use nginx to proxy and
>> HTTP request to a server in another geographic location, does the HTTP
>> response go directly to the requester's IP address or does it route
>> back through the nginx proxy server?
>>     
>
> It goes back through the proxy.  It would seem rather odd to your
> browser to request something from a server and suddenly get a response
> from some other random server, wouldn't it?
>   
You can do that with IP tunneling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_tunnel
http://kb.linuxvirtualserver.org/wiki/LVS/TUN

Normally, though, the trafficking algorithms don't permit checking the 
IP for geo information - at least none of the implementations I know of 
allow for that, so it's probably not appropriate for you.
>   
>> I'm getting ready to split my site into two locations (West Coast and
>> East Coast of the US) and I want to redirect requests to the closest
>> geographic server, but don't want the bandwidth for the response to go
>> through the original request server.
>>     
>
> You'd have to redirect, or use some other method of geographic load
> distribution method such as DNS, for example: 
>
> http://www.ultradns.com/solutions/traffic.html
> http://edgedirector.com/
>
> I don't use either of these services, so I'm not recommending them in
> any way, other than to the extent that they do what you need.
>
>   
Alternatively, you could use a different domain for each, e.g.

www.site.com
www1.site.com
>> I think the bandwidth from the response server would be direct to the
>> requester and not the request server, but I just want to make sure.
>> Otherwise, geographic load serving woulldn't be very useful.
>>     
>
> It isn't terribly useful in the scenario you seem to be suggesting.
>
> Cliff
>   
I agree.

Is there a compelling reason why you'd want to have two servers / 
clusters on opposite sides of the US?  The difference in speed between 
them would be minimal, and unless you're dealing with very large 
clusters of servers, I would think it more of a disadvantage than an 
advantage having two clusters in different geographical locations, 
though fairly close to each other in cyberspace.

I don't know who your service providers are, but you may get a faster 
response from a good host on the opposite side of the US than a slower 
one on 'your' side, anyway.  You might even get a faster response from a 
good host in the UK than a slower one in your own region.

Cheers,

Marcus.