What is ITO Latency-based Load Balancing?

Internet Traffic Optimization (ITO) Load Balancer

Load balancing is a common method used to balance traffic across redundant systems. It ensures no single server or resource is overwhelmed, and in turn, protects against outages and improves load times. It can also assist with app rollouts, A/B testing, or network expansions. 

Our Internet Traffic Optimization (ITO) load balancing solution is a latency-based load balancer that is ideal for multi-vendor configurations like Multi-CDN or multi-cloud environments. It performs similarly to Round Robin or Weighted Round Robin, but also accounts for round trip time (RTT) and is configured using Record Pools. 

Pools are groups of endpoints that are applied to DNS records. When a record is queried it will rotate through the resources in the pool, which are dynamically served to end users based on how fast an endpoint responds.  

Tip: Latency load balancing is configured by region, so you’ll want to have multiple resources in whichever region you are using this feature. 

Latency-based Load Balancing: Send DNS Traffic to the Fastest Resource, Every Time.

With this approach, end users are always pointed to the best performing endpoint. You can create A, ANAME, or CNAME record pools, which consist of multiple IP addresses or hostnames. These records are monitored through Sonar, our state-of-the-art performance monitoring suite, that checks the health of each resource in your pool. 

Customize Check Frequencies and Control Deviation Allowance for Endpoints in ITO Pools

Check frequency and location configurations can be customized according to the exact needs of your domain(s). For instance, if you want to create ITO Pools for North America East and North America West, you would select multiple monitoring nodes in each region for that check. This way, you won’t need to create separate checks for each region, just separate regional pools.

The Interval Policy will determine the resolution time of your endpoint. When you create your ITO pool, you will use a similar feature called Pool Frequency which is how often DNS asks Sonar for resolution times. Lowering the interval between checks costs more, but is in no way cost-prohibitive, and the resulting improvement in performance is more than worth it.

You can also control how often Constellix DNS changes which endpoints are in the pool based on performance deviations. The lower the deviation allowance, the more often the pool will update which endpoints are being served. Increasing the deviation allowance can lower monthly costs; however, this can impact end-user satisfaction, so be sure to weigh the pros and cons of higher deviations carefully.

Take Latency Load Balancing to the Next Level with GeoDNS

For even greater performance, you can combine our Global Traffic Director (GTD), GeoIP solution, or our GeoProximity services with ITO Pools to deliver a superior end-user experience based on user location. 

As you can see, latency-based load balancing is a powerful tool for any domain that produces resource-demanding content such as image files, video streams, gaming services, and more, and is a must for any multi-CDN or multi-cloud configuration.