Methods, systems, computer program products, and methods of doing business
by performing load balancing of content requests using information
regarding the cost of dynamically creating the requested document content.
Cost metrics are gathered by a server which generates requested content,
and may reflect processing at one or more other servers. This cost
information is provided to a load balancing host. Several alternative
approaches for providing the cost metrics may be used, including defining
new headers for response messages, specifying cookie values, and so forth.
The load balancing host may choose to route a subsequent request for that
content to the server which most recently generated the content, or to
another available server, depending on the cost of re-generating the
content and the current load on those servers.
