This reminds me that I wish DNS had some way to define a load balancing algorithm for clients to use, so browsers could make load balancing decisions. This would eliminate the need for virtual IP addresses, having to pass originating subnet information up recursive queries, having to remove faulty VIPs (or hosts) from DNS, etc.
It is baffling to me that inside the datacenter, I can control the balancing strategy for every service-to-service transaction, but for the end user's browser, all I can do is some L3 hacks to make two routers appear as one (for failover purposes). L3 balancing would be completely unnecessary if I could just program the user agent to go to the right host, after all. The end result is unnecessary cost and complexity multiplied over a billion websites.
It is baffling to me that inside the datacenter, I can control the balancing strategy for every service-to-service transaction, but for the end user's browser, all I can do is some L3 hacks to make two routers appear as one (for failover purposes). L3 balancing would be completely unnecessary if I could just program the user agent to go to the right host, after all. The end result is unnecessary cost and complexity multiplied over a billion websites.