Firewall Wizards: Re: FW-1 load balancing is unbalanced

[Chad Schieken <cschieke () advsys com>]

Are the webservers identical hardware? I've found that when round-robining 
(via DNS round robin, not FW-1) that if one of the servers isn't as fast as 
the others it ruins the flow.

OS version etc, will also play a role. Could be something as small as a TCP 
stack tweak on one server, causing that server to be able to respond faster, 
causing FW-1 to wieght it higher. Or the process on a slower box with a slower 
rating from FW-1.

> A.B.C.4 and A.B.C.11 are the first two addresses, and A.B.C.1 is the third.
>  I am beginning to wonder if FW-1 thinks that X.Y.Z.1 is a special address
> for load balancing.  Something appears to be weighting FW-1 load balancing
> in favor of that machine, but I have no clue as to what it might be.  I am
> almost desparate enough to change the IP address of the third machine, just
> to see if it helps.
>
> Does anyone have load balancing working?  Does anyone have any suggestions
> for me?  
>
> Thanks for any help,
> Neil