[erlang-questions] Fault-Tolerant TCP/IP Servers

[Holger Hoffstaette]

On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:17:20 -0500, David Mercer wrote:

> I must admit, I am disappointed that there is no Erlang solution.  This

This has really nothing to do with Erlang or any other language; it is
just  plain a problem with how client-side network addressing works in
TCP. As  long as the physical server host/port is exposed directly, you
either need fault-tolerant clients with backup addresses and migration
logic built in etc. (this is btw. much more difficult than it sounds), or
an intermediary between client and server. One for Linux is e.g. HAProxy
(http://haproxy.1wt.eu/) though there are others, both free and
commercial, with different advantages and disadvantes.

> seems like a basic building block to fault-tolerant systems.  So, I am

It is, but the problem can be attacked on the application level or as an
infrastructure concern, and both approaches can lead to very different
solutions (like Rick R's suggestion to use SCTP instead of TCP).

Holger