The addition of the Gigabit Ethernet ports and new densities make it a better fit for the LAN and high-speed environments than was the CS-100.

ArrowPoint is making a strong push for high-availability Web sites with de facto features, including Web- and SSH-based administration, RMON and SNMP management, global load-balancing, SNMP hot standby and link redundancy via a second CS-150.

The CS-150 fits into the middle of ArrowPoint's product line, between the eight-port CS-50 and the monster CS-800 chassis-based system. Available with 12 Fast Ethernet ports and up to four 100BASE-FX or two Gigabit Ethernet ports, the CS-150 is ideal for midsize Web sites in need of high-speed uplinks. Powered by ArrowPoint's Web Network Services (WebNS) software, the CS-150 provides intelligent Internet traffic management, capable of load-balancing traffic based on a variety of criteria and applications.

Carrying the Load

Local load-balancing decisions can be made via port numbers, with distributions based on a round-robin, weighted round-robin, least-connections or server-load algorithm. Server load is calculated based on the normalized response time of the server to the client. To load-balance the cache, and to ensure that cache hits will be as frequent as possible, other algorithms are available to direct client traffic to the same cache, based on the domain name or URL of the HTTP request.

The CS-150 also supports URL load-balancing based on the URL of the HTTP request. URL load-balancing, or content switching (choose your favorite buzz phrase), requires that a device delay its load-balancing decision until after the TCP session is established. This means the CS-150 appliance must act on behalf of the Web server to establish the TCP connection before it load-balances the incoming request to the most appropriate server. Once the TCP session is established, the incoming HTTP request can be examined and used to influence the load-balancing decision.

For example, all URLs for a particular Web site that fall below /images could be directed to a subset of the Web servers for performance reasons. Other applications might include directing all /cgi-bin/ traffic to beefy multiprocessor Web servers for faster response times. The WebNS-enabled Content Smart Web Switches also can load-balance traffic based on an SSL session ID and Web cookies for more comprehensive and complex traffic-management scenarios.

Single Point of Failure

Like its predecessor, the CS-150 makes use of an IDE disk drive as part of its internal workings, which opens the possibility of a HDD failure completely taking out the device. I simulated a power failure and had to wait well over a minute-and-a-half for the CS-150 to check its disk before coming online.

Clearly this will be an issue for some sites that can't afford a redundant configuration or choose not to implement one. Although other solutions in this space also rely on a hard-disk drive for numerous functions, including running the operating system and logging data, ArrowPoint should work to eliminate this "moving part" liability if possible. Company officials agreed with our worst-case scenario and pointed out future plans to augment disk storage with solid-state memory to reduce downtime from dirty disks and an unclean reboot.

My only other gripe was the obfuscated nomenclature geared toward service providers, but after a few hours with the box, I was very comfortable with the CLI (command-line interface) and Web interface.

Test Drive

In Network Computing's Real-World Labs® at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I took a CS-150 Content Smart Web Switch configured with 12 Fast Ethernet and two Gigabit Ethernet ports for a test run. For the first round of tests, I connected the CS-150 directly to an Extreme Networks Summit48 Ethernet switch via a single Gigabit Ethernet connection. I then configured and attached 12 Red Hat Linux-based Apache-powered Web servers (200-MHz Pentiums) directly to the 12 Fast Ethernet ports on the CS-150.

After powering up the CS-150, I was guided through an easy-to-follow configuration script that assisted with Layer 3, Layer 5, proxy cache or transparent cache configurations. After choosing to go with a base Layer 3 configuration, I was prompted for server and virtual IP address information for the Web presence I was creating. Following this configuration, I had an initial test site up and running in a matter of minutes.

Making use of RadView's WebLoad HTTP bench-marking software, I stress-tested the device with both HTTP 1.0 and 1.1 traffic. The CS-150 performed up to snuff and easily handled the HTTP test streams beyond 45 Mbps or T3 speeds.

With the new gigabit ports and more flexible configurations, the CS-150 can go head-to-head with market leading products from Alteon WebSystems, F5 Networks, Foundry Networks and RadWare.

Send your comments on this article to Gregory Yerxa at gyerxa@nwc.com