Weight Based Routing is an innovative feature introduced in Flowroute's routing system, providing a departure from traditional routing practices. While traditional routing directs all traffic exclusively through the primary route until an issue arises, Weight Based Routing offers enhanced adaptability. This feature allows customers to specify the percentage of traffic allocated to both the primary and failover routes.
Unlike the conventional approach where traffic shifts entirely to the failover route when the primary route encounters a problem, Weight Based Routing empowers customers to tailor traffic distribution based on their preferences. This flexibility optimizes network resource utilization and affords customers greater control over traffic management.
The difference. Flowroute's traditional routing parameters; primary and failover, allow customers to specify a route that takes 100% of traffic unless an issue is detected with the primary route and then 100% of traffic is directed to the failover route. The Weight Based Routing feature allows customers to utilize primary and failover route specification as a percentage of traffic spread across both routes.
By adding a ;weight=X parameter to both routes, traffic can be conditionally spread across the two.
Weights must be applied to both primary and failover routes for the DID in question.
Weight values are specified between 0 and 1000 with 1000 being the heaviest weight and calculated as an overall percentage.
For example:
route1@example.com;weight=400
route2@example.com;weight=100
100/(400+100) = 20%
400/(400+100) = 80%
You can find additional technical information on the Flowroute Dev portal.
NOTE: This is a manual configuration tool and without the explicit declaration of the weights, the standard failover route policies remain default.
To configure Weight Based Routing, which allows you to control the percentage-based distribution of traffic between a primary and failover route, follow these steps:
Navigate to the Flowroute Inbound Route page on Manage.
Define your route (the can be Host, Phone, or URI types). You can add an alias here, it is encouraged to help identify the routes easily.
Check Primary and Failover Routes: First, ensure that both your primary and failover routes have the weight parameter included. Weighted Routing only works when both routes have this parameter specified. If either route lacks the weight parameter, the system will default to traditional primary/failover behavior.
Assign Weight Values: To allocate a weight, simply add the "weight" parameter to the route, followed by a value between 0 and 1000. This value represents the relative weight or percentage of traffic you want to send through that route. For example, if you want to allocate 40% of the traffic to "my_route1," you would add ";weight=200" to that route, where 200 represents the weight. (e.g. 123.23.23.123;weight=200, 1231232345;weight=300).
Calculate Percentage Distribution: When both primary and failover routes have weight values assigned, the system calculates the percentage distribution automatically. It's based on the weight values you assigned. The percentage sent to one route is determined by the weight of that route divided by the sum of the weights of both routes. For instance, if "my_route1" has a weight of 200 and "my_route2" has a weight of 300, then the distribution would be 40% for "my_route1" and 60% for "my_route2." (e.g. 123.23.23.123;weight=200" & "234.345.66.534;weight=300").