This is to announce the release of Pound v1.1. New in this release: - improved auto-configuration. Pound compiles now correctly on more platforms, including various *BSD. - new: LogLevel 3 for Apache-compatible "combined log format" (should be easier for automated tools). - Pound no longer asks for a client certificate in HTTPS unless it is really required. - much improved stability; new monitor process to watch and restart the real process if necessary. - better handling of the 'Connectio: close' header, resulting in fewer problems with IE 5+. - possibility to listen on all available interfaces, including dynamic changing IP addresses. - a few minor bug fixes. Most notably a work-around for a bug in the threads library on OpenBSD 3.2. - new support for HTTPS for Zope 2.6 (same as previously available for 2.5.1) The software is at version 1.1 (production quality). Further testing (especially under heavy loads), improvements and suggestions are welcome. What is Pound (from the Web page) - a reverse-proxy: it passes requests from client browsers to one or more back-end servers. - a load balancer: it will distribute the requests from the client browsers among several back-end servers, while keeping session information. - an SSL wrapper: Pound will decrypt HTTPS requests from client browsers and pass them as plain HTTP to the back-end browsers. - an HTTP/HTTPS sanitizer: Pound will verify requests for correctness and accept only well-formed ones. - an HTTP/1.1 to 1.0 proxy. - a fail-over-server: should a back-end server fail, Pound will take note of the fact and stop passing requests to it until it recovers. - a request redirector - it will pass client requests to separate groups of servers, based on required URL and the presence or absence of headers (pattern matching) Pound was specifically developed to serve as a front-end for multiple instances of Zope running on top of a common ZEO storage, but can be used with any other web server. A patch for the Python source of z2.py is available as part of the distribution to allow using Pound's SSL capabilities. Pound is currently in use in several medium to large volume sites and seems to be holding up quite well: largest reported site does about 3.5 million requests per day, peaking at over 300 requests per second. The speed is well superior to other, equivalent solutions, the configuration is much simpler and the necessary resources (CPU, RAM, disk) are much, much lower. Pound is distributed under the GPL. For further information, download, etc. please see http://www.apsis.ch/pound Enjoy and let me know how it works for you. -- Robert Segall Apsis GmbH Postfach, Uetikon am See, CH-8707 Tel: +41-1-920 4904