New Layer 7 capabilities, added to Coyote Point's E-350 intermediate and E-450 high-end models of the Equalizer, offer cookie-based persistence, cookie stuffing, SSL ID based persistence, and URL load balancing.

by Wayne Kawamoto [September 12, 2002]

Coyote Point Systems, a provider of Internet traffic management technology, announced availability of its Equalizer 7.0, a Layer 7-enabled upgrade of the company's flagship intelligent load balancing appliance. According to the company, the Layer 7 capabilities added to the E-350 intermediate and E-450 high-end models of the Equalizer offer cookie-based persistence, cookie stuffing, SSL ID based persistence, and URL load balancing. And at $5,995, the company says that the E-350 is the lowest-priced Layer 7 load balancing appliance on the market.

The company says that Layer 4 load balancing appliances route requests solely according to the value in the packet header. In contrast, Layer 7 load balancing, such as Coyote Point's E-350 and E-450, examine the URL, cookies, headers, and other info in an HTTP request, and use that higher-level information to decide which server is best suited to handle a given HTTP request. As a result, the company claims that Layer 7 load balancing should allow ISPs to store different types of content on different Web servers.

Specific features include:

• Cookie checking that directs site visitors to the appropriate server based on cookie information.
  
  
• ISP proxy persistence: instead of relying on the IP address, layer 7 load balancing uses cookies located in the user's browser to ensure that the correct content is delivered.
  
  
• SSL persistence: keeping connections intact until a session ends: Equalizer 7.0 uses SSL connection IDs and cookies to maintain persistence for site visitors via proxy servers and secure connections.
  
  
• SSL acceleration: it's possible to add an SSL acceleration card to reduce the load on servers by offloading SSL traffic.

"It has always been Coyote Point's mission to offer robust, intelligent load balancing capability with easy setup and inclusive reporting features at a fraction of competitors' prices," said Bill Kish, Coyote Point's president and CTO. "Adding layer 7 capabilities allow us to extend our unique value proposition to service providers with the most advanced network architectures. These capabilities allow service providers to offer their customers state-of-the-art persistence mechanisms to ensure that no user session is interrupted."

Pricing
The E-350, which is priced at $5,995, is designed to balance an unlimited number of 16-server virtual clusters at a recommended T-3+ bandwidth and handle 2 million simultaneous active connections.

The E-450, which is priced at $9,995, is designed to balance an unlimited number of 64-server clusters at up to 200 Mb/s and handle up to 4 million simultaneous active connections. Both models are housed in a 1U rackmount.

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