[Lsr] Why not leverage Network conditions to optimize balancing among multiple App Layer Load Balancers? as proposed by draft-dunbar-lsr-5g-edge-compute-ospf-ext

[Linda Dunbar <[e-mail]>]

Christian,

You said at LSR session today that there might be concern of network optimizing ANYCAST traffic to better balance among multiple App Layer Load Balancers.
First of all, only the Applications that need to leverage the network condition to balance among their multiple Load Balancers will get the benefit of path selection that are based on the combination of routing distance and other dynamic running status. The networks (e.g. 5G EC Local Data Networks)  only optimize the ANYCAST traffic for the registered addresses.
The network is already responsible for selecting the shortest path to one Application Load Balancer. draft-dunbar-lsr-5g-edge-compute-ospf-ext proposes to add additional weight in path selection.

ANYCAST makes it possible to dynamically load balance across server locations based on network conditions. With multiple servers having the same ANYCAST address, it eliminates the single point of failure and bottleneck at the application layer load balancer that has the shortest routing distance. Another benefit of using ANYCAST address is removing the dependency on how UEs get the IP addresses for their Applications. Some UEs (or clients) might use stale cached IP addresses for extended period.

Network service providers can even offer this as a value added service, making network information more useful to deliver services to applications.
Isn't it a win-win approach for both network service providers and the applications owners?

Linda Dunbar