[Zope] ANNOUNCE: Pound - reverse proxy and load balancer - v0.8

[Robert Segall]

This is to announce the release of Pound v0.8.

This release is mostly about bug fixes. Unless some new suggestions come in, 
the feature set seems to be rather complete at this point.

Changes from previous version:

- fixed a serious problem: Pound now is able to detect back-end connections 
that have timed out (closed by the server) and re-open them if necessary. 
Previous versions would return a "500 Server error" and log "can't read from 
xxx" in such cases. This issue was mostly apparent with newer versions of 
Apache that set time limits on connection times.
- fixed the request pattern matching as per the RFCs (all allowed character 
classes).
- fixed a problem with the handling of "HEAD" type requests.
- fixed an issue with conflicts between SSL and multi-threading.
- added a header indicating the origin of the request (X-Forwarded-For)
- added the possibility to pass SSL certificate information in headers.

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 (pattern matching)

For further information, download, etc. please see http://www.apsis.ch/pound

The software is at version 0.8 (beta quality). Further testing (especially 
under heavy loads), improvements and suggestions are welcome.

Pound is distributed under the GPL.

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