Netscape Application Server-- Balancing User-Request Loads

Administration Guide
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Installation Guide

About the Update and Broadcast Intervals
You can set the time with which a Netscape Application Server updates the Server Load and AppLogic Performance criteria. If these values change frequently and drastically, it is useful to update the values more often. The negative aspect to this is that you increase the amount of work the Netscape Application Server is doing. If the criteria values to not change all that much, you can increase the time between updates, saving server resources for application processing.

The same theory applies to setting the broadcast intervals. If values are changing often and drastically, the broadcast intervals should be short so the servers are updated often. This does increase network traffic load, however, so it is important to find an optimal balance.

Broadcast and update intervals are relative to the Base Broadcast/Update Interval. This is the interval at which the load balancing service "wakes up" and performs any updates, checks to see if any updates were received, and broadcasts any new values. Broadcast and update intervals that are even multiples of the base interval are invoked at that time.

For example, if the base value is 300 seconds, and the Server Load and AppLogic Criteria broadcast intervals are at 900 seconds each, these values are broadcast every third time the load balancing service "wakes up." The other two times the load balancing service awakens, it redetermines the distribution order based on whether it received any updates from other Netscape Application Servers.

You can set update and broadcast intervals for several entities, as described in the following table:


Set Interval For	Description
Base Broadcast/Update Interval	The interval at which the load balancing service "wakes up."
AppLogic Criteria	The interval at which the load balancing service broadcasts the AppLogic Performance value.
Server Load Criteria	The interval at which the load balancing service broadcasts the Server Load value.
Server Load	The interval at which the load balancing service updates the Server Load value.
CPU Load	The interval at which the load balancing service updates the CPU Load value.
Disk Input/Output	The interval at which the load balancing service updates the Disk I/O value.
Memory Thrash	The interval at which the load balancing service updates the Memory Thrash value.
Number of Requests Queued	The interval at which the load balancing service updates the Number of Requests Queued value.
Max Hops	The maximum number of times a request is allowed to be passed between servers.

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