Soft-Load Balancing for Apache+PHP

Can you guys provide some advise as to how I should implement non-sticky load-balancing for a small set of apache+php linux servers (will start with 5 servers, can grow upto 10-15) using *free/opensource* tools... As far as I know, my options are:

1. DNS Load Balancing, basically creating multiple A records to distribute the load. The thing I don't like about this approach is, if you are getting hits from a certain big ISP, they will always resolve to the same IP since DNS queries are cached. If you decrease the TTL, then your name server becomes a bottleneck and you will have to either implement your nameserver or rely on your service providers NS.

2. Using Apache Mod_rewrite

3. Using Mod_backhand

As for 2 & 3, there has to be an entry point to the cluster, and I probably need to dedicate one of the machines for this. How fast are these? How much load do they put on the server? Which one do you think is better? Also, do you know any other free/opensource alternative which might be superior?

In summary, can you please share your experiences about this topic?

Thanks,

 

 

 

 

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