Thank you for your answer!
(Although I'm not quite satisfied with it
)
I should have mentioned my thoughts when I posted my suggestion: the intended usage is for a LAN where you have high-speed transfers.
I think in a situation where there are many users (lets say from twice the number of NICs) downloading not too large files from the ftp server, the round-robin scheme is a good selection.
I want to explain a scenario where IP selection based on connection count would be of great advantage:
(Lets assume my config with 3 NICs used for balancing)
Lets further assume there are mostly large (>500MB) files on the server, like videos or stuff...
Now let 2 or 3 clients browse and add files to their queues.
After that they begin downloading. So client1 will start on NIC1, client2 on NIC2 and client3 on NIC3, so far so fine.
But now client1 does not use full bandwidth cause it is downloading from other source or pc is slow or whatever so it gets only 4 mb/s. clients 2 and 3 get 11 mb/s and are far earlier ready and request the next file. So client2 will be on NIC1, together with client1 and gets only 7 mb/s. Client3 is fine alone on NIC2... now I assume worst case and client2 now has very large file to transfer, so both client 1 and 2 dl from NIC1 a long time. And Client 3 has some smaller files and will end up sharing NIC1 with the 2 others, effectively its download will be 1/3 what it could be, because NICs 2 and 3 idle... with greater number of users this -could- be worse.
I know this is not very likely to happen, BUT I want my clients always served at best possibilities
, so if connections were counted they would get most bandwidth for their transfers.
For the listing connections, I don't think they affect this scheme too much, because 1.) who uses LIST anymore, we have STAT
and 2.) its only a short time this connection is used, its unlikely that during this time a transfer starts.
So enough now...I think you already understand what I wanted to explain.
I don't want you to waste time implementing such an algorithm if you think its not worth it, I just want you to consider my suggestion next time you have some spare time and don't know what to do
But maybe you think now that its a not so bad idea after all and implement it in the not so far future, then I would be very glad!
Anyways, you've done great work on this ftp server!!
Regards,
Flamer