Pound (networking)
Encyclopedia
Pound is a lightweight open source
reverse proxy
program and application firewall suitable to be used as a web server
load balancing
solution. Developed by an IT
security company, it has a strong emphasis on security. The original intent on developing Pound was to allow distributing the load among several Zope
servers running on top of ZEO (Zope Extensible Object). However, Pound is not limited to Zope-based installations. Using regular expression
matching on the requested URL
s, Pound can pass different kinds of requests to different backend server groups. A few more of its most important features:
Pound is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License
and can be used free of charge even in business environments.
Open-source software
Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...
reverse proxy
Reverse proxy
In computer networks, a reverse proxy is a type of proxy server that retrieves resources on behalf of a client from one or more servers. These resources are then returned to the client as though it originated from the reverse proxy itself...
program and application firewall suitable to be used as a web server
Web server
Web server can refer to either the hardware or the software that helps to deliver content that can be accessed through the Internet....
load balancing
Load balancing (computing)
Load balancing is a computer networking methodology to distribute workload across multiple computers or a computer cluster, network links, central processing units, disk drives, or other resources, to achieve optimal resource utilization, maximize throughput, minimize response time, and avoid...
solution. Developed by an IT
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
security company, it has a strong emphasis on security. The original intent on developing Pound was to allow distributing the load among several Zope
Zope
Zope is a free and open-source, object-oriented Web application server written in the Python programming language. Zope stands for "Z Object Publishing Environment", and was the first system using the now common object publishing methodology for the Web...
servers running on top of ZEO (Zope Extensible Object). However, Pound is not limited to Zope-based installations. Using regular expression
Regular expression
In computing, a regular expression provides a concise and flexible means for "matching" strings of text, such as particular characters, words, or patterns of characters. Abbreviations for "regular expression" include "regex" and "regexp"...
matching on the requested URL
Uniform Resource Locator
In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....
s, Pound can pass different kinds of requests to different backend server groups. A few more of its most important features:
- detects when a backend server fails or recovers, and bases its load balancing decisions on this information: if a backend server fails, it will not receive requests until it recovers
- decrypts httpsHttpsHypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol with SSL/TLS protocol to provide encrypted communication and secure identification of a network web server...
requests to httpHypertext Transfer ProtocolThe Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....
ones - IPv6IPv6Internet Protocol version 6 is a version of the Internet Protocol . It is designed to succeed the Internet Protocol version 4...
support - can load balance from IPv6 clients to IPv4 servers and vice-versa
- rejects incorrect requests
- can be used in a chrootChrootA chroot on Unix operating systems is an operation that changes the apparent root directory for the current running process and its children. A program that is run in such a modified environment cannot name files outside the designated directory tree. The term "chroot" may refer to the chroot...
environment - has no special requirements concerning which web server software or browser to use
- supports virtual hosts
- configurable
Pound is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
and can be used free of charge even in business environments.
See also
- Traffic ServerTraffic ServerThe Apache Traffic Server is a modular, high-performance reverse proxy and forward proxy server, generally comparable to Nginx and Squid. It was created by Inktomi, and distributed as a commercial product called the Inktomi Traffic Server, before Inktomi was acquired by Yahoo!...
- Web acceleratorWeb acceleratorA web accelerator is a proxy server that reduces web site access times. They can be a self-contained hardware appliance or installable software....
which discusses host-based HTTP acceleration - Proxy serverProxy serverIn computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server...
which discusses client-side proxies - Reverse proxyReverse proxyIn computer networks, a reverse proxy is a type of proxy server that retrieves resources on behalf of a client from one or more servers. These resources are then returned to the client as though it originated from the reverse proxy itself...
which discusses origin-side proxies - Comparison of web serversComparison of web servers-Overview:-Features:- Operating system support :...
- Comparison of lightweight web serversComparison of lightweight web serversLightweight web servers are web servers which have been designed to run with very small resource overhead because of hardware, environment, or simply for the challenge of it....
- Internet Cache ProtocolInternet Cache ProtocolThe Internet Cache Protocol is a protocol used for coordinating web caches. Its purpose is to find out the most appropriate location to retrieve a requested object from in the situation where multiple caches are in use at a single site...