Traditional techniques for a distributed web server design rely on manipulation of central resources, such as routers or DNS services, to distribute requests designated for a single IP address to multiple web servers. The goal of the Distributed Cooperative Web Server DCWS system development is to explore application-level techniques for distributing web content. We achieve this by dynamically manipulating the hyperlinks stored within the web documents themselves. The DCWS system e ectively eliminates the bottleneck of centralized resources, while balancing the load among distributed web servers. DCWS servers may be located in di erent networks, or even di erent continents and still balance load e ectively. DCWS system design is fully compatible with existing HTTP protocol semantics and existing web client software products. August 1998 Department of Computer Science The University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721 fbakers,bkmoong@cs.arizona.edu
Scott M. Baker, Bongki Moon