Re: DNS load-balancing two equal nexthops is not fair

2010-07-08 Thread Victor Duchovni
On Thu, Jul 08, 2010 at 01:37:08PM -0700, Florin Andrei wrote: > On 07/06/2010 01:10 PM, Victor Duchovni wrote: >> >> So you have multiple exit points with non-uniform latency, but the more >> severe congestion is downstream, so you want to load the exit points >> uniformly. Yes, the solution is

Re: DNS load-balancing two equal nexthops is not fair

2010-07-08 Thread Florin Andrei
On 07/06/2010 01:10 PM, Victor Duchovni wrote: So you have multiple exit points with non-uniform latency, but the more severe congestion is downstream, so you want to load the exit points uniformly. Yes, the solution is to disable the connection cache, and set reasonably low connection and helo

Re: DNS load-balancing two equal nexthops is not fair

2010-07-06 Thread Victor Duchovni
On Tue, Jul 06, 2010 at 01:00:14PM -0700, Florin Andrei wrote: > Having multiple exit points seems to improve the overall delivery speed - > this is true even right now, when distribution is skewed to the faster > server 4:1. My estimate is, a near-1:1 distribution would actually fix our > time

Re: DNS load-balancing two equal nexthops is not fair

2010-07-06 Thread Florin Andrei
On 07/06/2010 12:27 PM, Victor Duchovni wrote: If you want to deliver the same number of messages to each server, regardless of server performance, (message-count fairness, rather than concurrency fairness), and suffer high latency when a slow server starts to impede message flow, then turning o

Re: DNS load-balancing two equal nexthops is not fair

2010-07-06 Thread Victor Duchovni
On Tue, Jul 06, 2010 at 12:10:41PM -0700, Florin Andrei wrote: > I realize that email delivery is not a trivial problem, but it seems > baffling that a seemingly simple task ("fair" volume-based load balancing > between transports) is so hard to achieve. If you want to deliver the same number o

Re: DNS load-balancing two equal nexthops is not fair

2010-07-06 Thread Florin Andrei
On 07/06/2010 11:30 AM, Victor Duchovni wrote: No, disabling the cache will still leave a skewed distribution. Connection creation is uniform across the servers, but connection lifetime is much longer on the slow server, so its connection concurrency is much higher (potentially equal to the dest

Re: DNS load-balancing two equal nexthops is not fair

2010-07-06 Thread Victor Duchovni
On Tue, Jul 06, 2010 at 11:21:19AM -0700, Florin Andrei wrote: > On 06/30/2010 11:17 AM, Wietse Venema wrote: >> When sending mail via SMTP, Postfix randomizes the order of >> equal-preference server IP addresses. >> >> However, with SMTP connection caching enabled, the faster SMTP >> server will

Re: DNS load-balancing two equal nexthops is not fair

2010-07-06 Thread Florin Andrei
On 06/30/2010 11:17 AM, Wietse Venema wrote: When sending mail via SMTP, Postfix randomizes the order of equal-preference server IP addresses. However, with SMTP connection caching enabled, the faster SMTP server will get more mail than the slower SMTP server. It seems you imply that disabling

Re: DNS load-balancing two equal nexthops is not fair

2010-06-30 Thread Wietse Venema
Florin Andrei: > Correct me if I'm wrong, but that doesn't seem possible with Postfix. I > couldn't find any setting that says "cut off delivery after N messages". That would actually make your problem worse. When one host is slower than the other, and connections are closed after a fixed number

Re: DNS load-balancing two equal nexthops is not fair

2010-06-30 Thread Wietse Venema
When sending mail via SMTP, Postfix randomizes the order of equal-preference server IP addresses. However, with SMTP connection caching enabled, the faster SMTP server will get more mail than the slower SMTP server. So, you need to be a little more careful with your claims. Wietse

DNS load-balancing two equal nexthops is not fair

2010-06-30 Thread Florin Andrei
Emails are sent from a machine running Postfix 2.5.0. They are generated by software as a batch (triggered by certain events from outside), and injected very quickly into the local Postfix instance, which never sends out email directly to the Internet, but only through some Postfix gateways on