The bandwidth metric uses real server octet counts to assign sessions to a server. The WSM monitors the number of octets sent between the server and the WSM. Then, the real server weights are adjusted so they are inversely proportional to the number of octets that the real server processes during the last interval.

Servers that process more octets are considered to have less available bandwidth than servers that have processed fewer octets. For example, the server that processes half the amount of octets over the last interval receives twice the weight of the other servers. The higher the bandwidth used, the smaller the weight assigned to the server. Based on this weighting, the subsequent requests go to the server with the highest amount of free bandwidth. These weights are automatically assigned. The bandwidth metric requires identical servers with identical connections.

Note: The effects of the bandwidth weighting apply directly to the real servers and are not necessarily confined to the real server group. When bandwidth-metered real servers are also used in other real server groups that use the least connections or roundrobin metrics, the bandwidth weights are applied on top of these calculations for the affected real servers. Since the bandwidth weight changes dynamically, this can produce fluctuations in traffic distribution for the real server groups that use the least connections or roundrobin metrics.

Bandwidth