Application Delivery Controllers \ Load Balancers Solutions & Vendors

The job of a load balancer is to distribute traffic across multiple servers. For example you can place a load balancer in front of multiple web servers (also known as a web server farm), and When traffic arrives destined for the server farm, the load balancer forwards the traffic to a particular server within the server farm. In its simplest form, this can be configured in a round robin fashion, where the load balancer sends the first request to the first server, then the second request to the second server, and so on. This will enable high availability, better performance and scalability.

Load balancers can also use other clever algorithms in order to distribute traffic. For example, if a network consists of two email servers where one of the email servers is old and slow, and where the other one is new and powerful, a load balancer can be configured to send more emails to the new and more powerful server.

Load balancers can detect when a server has gone down (become unresponsive) and then come back online again, which is a feature known as server health monitoring. Some load balancers are combined with built in IPS and other application layer security features, amongst other features, such as SSL off-loading, compression and caching functionality. The combination of a load balancer and these other features built in is now termed as Application Delivery Controllers.

 

 

 

 

Activ Networks has a solution known as BoostEdge that accelerates and protects web applications.

 

Array Networks provides load balancing and SSL acceleration in its range of ADC products.

 

A10 Networks is a network security vendor and has a range of ADC's in its AX series portfolio.

 

Barracuda Network offers an ADC solution with built in load balancing, IPS and other key features. Barracuda Networks also provides ADC capabilities built into their WAF solution, link balancing for balancing internet connectivity and a range of security solutions.

 

Brocade who delivers networking solutions to ISP carriers and very large networks, also provides layer 4-7 application delivery controllers.

 

CAI Networks has a portfolio of ADC's.

 

Celestix is a security vendor and provides ADC's.

 

Citrix provides load balancing and application acceleration in its NetScaler solution.

 

CoyotePoint Systems has a portfolio of ADC's targeted towards the mid-market.

 

Crescendo Networks specialises in application delivery and acceleration.

 

Fortinet is a market leader in network firewall appliances and delivers application delivery controllers.

 

F5 offers highly reputable ADC's. F5 also has a range of other solutions such as SSL VPN, Link controller and WAN optimisation products. F5's WAN optimisation and ADC's are tightly integrated.

 

jetNEXUS specialises in ADC's and application acceleration.

 

Kemp Technologies specialises in load balancers, ADC's and SSL acceleration.

 

Microsoft provides load balancing built into Microsoft server operating systems. It doesn't provide the full bells and whistles as a most of the other dedicated load balancers out there but may still suffice depending on the network requirements.

 

Radware has an application delivery controller known as AppDirector.

 

Sangfor is a company based in China who specialises in web security and optimisation. Sangfor delivers a range of application delivery controllers.

 

Strangeloop is a vendor that provides a solution in appliance and hosted platform known as SiteOptimizer.

 

Zeus Traffic Manager ADC comes in virtual, cloud and software platforms.