Load balancing service

1. A method, comprising:

providing a load balancing service to a plurality of customers;

wherein the load balancing service performs load balancing among a plurality of customer Web servers;

wherein the load balancing service load balances requests for Web content;

providing a user interface that allows a customer to display load balancing service traffic performance data for at least one location that served traffic for a specified domain name; and

wherein a load balancing service provider charges a fee to the customers for use of the load balancing service.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

providing a Web caching service to the plurality of customers;

wherein the Web caching service provides a plurality of caching servers;

wherein the plurality of caching servers store cacheable customer content; and

wherein a load balancing service provider charges a fee to the customers for the Web caching service.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein each caching server contains configuration information that relates to the list of domains that it may serve traffic for.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the configuration information may be distributed to the caching servers by a system administrator.

5. The method of claim 2 , wherein the load balancing service performs load balancing among a plurality of caching servers for user requests for cacheable content.

6. The method of claim 2 , wherein the cacheable content includes any of: movies, audio, images, text, plug-in program data, programs, streaming audio data, and video data.

7. The method of claim 2 , wherein the customer Web servers serve Web pages to users that contain embedded URLs for dynamic content linked to the customer Web servers and embedded URLs for cacheable content linked to the caching servers.

8. The method of claim 2 , wherein the load balancing service selects an appropriate caching server to serve a user request using service metric measurements of caching servers that serve the requested content and selecting the appropriate caching server with a service metric measurement that offers more appropriate performance for the user request than other caching servers.

9. The method of claim 2 , wherein the load balancing service performs periodic service metric measurements of the plurality of caching servers.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the load balancing service selects an appropriate customer Web server to serve a user request using traffic load measurements of customer Web servers that serve the requested content and selecting the appropriate customer Web server with a traffic load measurement that offers more appropriate performance for the user request than other customer Web servers.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the load balancing service performs periodic traffic load measurements of the plurality of customer Web servers.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the load balancing service returns a subset of IP addresses from a larger set of IP addresses in response to a DNS query, and wherein the subset of IP addresses is associated with a set of customer Web servers better suited to respond to a Web content request than servers associated with IP addresses not in the subset of IP addresses.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein the load balancing service uses traffic load measurements when determining the subset of IP addresses.

14. The method of claim 12 , wherein the load balancing service periodically tests customer Web servers to determine each customer Web server's availability and uses availability tests when determining the subset of IP addresses.

15. The method of claim 12 , wherein the load balancing service uses information relating to distance between servers or server regions represented by the IP addresses and a client DNS making the DNS query when determining the subset of IP addresses.

16. The method of claim 15 , wherein the load balancing service uses ping tests to client DNS servers when determining the distance between the servers or server regions represented by the IP addresses and a client DNS making the DNS query.

17. The method of claim 1 , wherein the Web content is an HTML Web page.

18. The method of claim 17 , wherein the HTML Web page is a customer's HTML home page.

19. The method of claim 1 , wherein the load balancing service performs the load balancing between the plurality of customer Web servers in response to a request for Web content.

20. The method of claim 1 , wherein the user interface displays a world map that shows all locations that served traffic for the specified domain name.

21. The method of claim 1 , wherein the world map shows an amount of traffic served from each individual location over a certain time period for the specified domain name.

22. The method of claim 1 , wherein the user interface allows a customer to initiate a performance measurement of a Web page associated with a URL.

23. The method of claim 22 , wherein web server(s) at location(s) selected by the customer are instructed to request the Web page associated with the URL.

24. The method of claim 23 , wherein the user interface displays timing results from the web server(s) at location(s) selected by the customer relating to download times of the Web page and all of the Web page's components.

25. The method of claim 22 , wherein the user interface displays performance data for downloading specific components of the Web page.