Low-cost multi-user Linux terminal server?

[Brian Densmore]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jason Clinton 
> 
> webgiant at juno.com wrote:
> 
> ... on a 100mb network. In surplus of 50 users, you're talking 
> some fairly 
> behemoth hardware and gigabit backbones to 100Mbit hubs...
> 
Rather than using behemoth hardware, what about a "load-balancing"
server situation. Something sort of like network load-balancing. You
would need some kind of monitoring system, so that no one server would
get more connections than it could handle comfortably. 

Something like this (pardon my poor graphics):
____________    ____________       ____________    
| client 1 |    | client 2 |  ...  | client n |
|__________|    |__________|       |__________|
     |               |                  |       _____
----------------------------- ... --------------|lan|
           ___|______                           |___|
           | Load    |
           |balancer |
           |_________|
                |
   ----------------------------- ... ----------------
       |                |                  |
   ____|_______    _____|______       _____|______    
   | server 1 |    | server 2 |  ...  | server m |
   |__________|    |__________|       |__________|   

I could see a need for possibly multiple load balancers, setup
as a cluster. Or possibly to make the server farm a cluster and
forego the load balancer, which would be built into a cluster.

My vision of the load balancer though is that it would be much more
simple than a cluster. As all it would have to do is: have a table
that lists all the servers with a number of max clients, keep a
running tally of current clients, and direct traffic from the client
to the proper server. Basically it would be an ip-forwarder that keeps 
count. I don't know maybe this is a stupid idea.

Brian