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Scaling and Reliability
PeerCache™ Scalability FAQ
PeerCache™ was built to provide scalable performance for deployments within ISP and enterprise networks environments. Its architecture allows for efficient expansion of cache infrastructure, ensuring high performance, reliability, and optimized traffic distribution.
Can PeerCache™ Implement Cache Hierarchies?
Currently, PeerCache™ does not support neighboring cache hierarchies in its v1.0 version.
According to Joltid’s practical experience in building peer-to-peer cache systems, the behavior of peer-to-peer caching technology is much different from web-based one.
PeerCache™ works at such high traffic volume and achieves naturally high cache hit ratios; hence, no additional performance can be gained via neighboring caches.
PeerCache™ is built to offer high efficiency and effective bandwidth usage without using complex cache hierarchies.
How Can PeerCache™ Accommodate Larger Amounts of Traffic?
PeerCache™ can be scaled up with regard to traffic amount, implementing multiple cache servers.
Traffic load balancing is done using DNS round-robin method.
How It Works
It requires to add multiple IP address records to DNS for one hostname:
cache.p2p
Upon performing lookup, DNS automatically chooses one of the PeerCache™ IP addresses at random, distributing traffic among multiple cache servers.
Advantages Include:
- Scalable traffic distribution
- Performance improvement in case of heavy loads
- Efficient resource usage
- Simple multi-cache deployment handling
Do I Need to Purchase a Separate License for Each Cache?
No, PeerCache™ uses a single license file containing multiple IP addresses of cache servers in one deployment environment.
That helps simplify large-scale implementation and multi-cache management.
For more information about pricing and licensing in case of multi-cache deployment, please contact Joltid Sales support team.
How Can I Distribute Loads of My Caches Geographically?
PeerCache™ provides a number of ways of distributing cache load geographically.
Methods of Geographic Distribution Supported by PeerCache™
- Use Regional DNS Servers
- Using different DNS servers for different geographic areas allows you to point users to local cache infrastructure.
- Intelligent DNS Routing System
DNS that can automatically resolve cache hostnames depending on client IP or geographic location.
Area-Specific Cache Naming
If subscribers resolve to a domain name depending on geographic location, cache naming will be done using area-specific hostnames automatically.
Example If subscribers from Tallinn resolve to:
tln.adsl.estpak.ee and subscribers from Tartu resolve to:
trt.adsl.estpak.ee
Cache discovery names would become:
cache.p2p.tln.adsl.estpak.ee
cache.p2p.trt.adsl.estpak.ee
This way users will communicate with the nearest PeerCache™ server from their region, increasing performance and avoiding unnecessary long-distance communication.
How Reliable Is PeerCache™?
PeerCache™ is designed to work stably and reliably.
In reality, almost all problems occur due to factors other than PeerCache™ software. Those are such as:
- Hardware Failure
- Network Infrastructure Problems
- Misconfiguration
- PeerCache™ itself does not introduce any risks of unstable operation.
Failover Process
In case of cache failure:
- Client automatically stops using cache
- Communication is restored using P2P network directly
- Downloading process continues normally
At next scheduled lookup cycle (which usually occurs after 48 hours), client automatically tries again to find available cache
Built For Reliable User Experience
From the viewpoint of the user, PeerCache™ was developed to be as reliable as a peer-to-peer network.
