Problem with multi-homed Web servers

I seem to have stumbled across a problem in Squid that was just recently
corrected in the Apache proxy module.

I tried connecting to the "www.pcquote.com" site (which has four IP
addresses associated with it) after having connected to it moments
earlier, and immediately recieved a "connection refused" error from
Squid. I hit "reload" and it came right up.

I'm not quite sure if I'm reading the code correctly, but it looks like
what might be happening is that if a site with multiple IP addresses
refuses a connection on the first IP address tried, none of the others are
tried. Is this actually what Squid is doing, only trying one IP address
on a given host? Or did I just run into a strange one-off fluke?

This sort of problem is particularly noticable on the www.microsoft.com
sites -- there's around 14 IP addresses for that site, and if one of
them's down you wind up with strange things like "connection refused"
errors in one panel of a frame.

        -Mike Pelletier.
Received on Mon Apr 14 1997 - 14:16:21 MDT