How does -h hashing work?

I'm curious as to how client hashing works in pen. The man page isn't
very verbose on the subject.

Basically pen works great now. We have apache running and balancing java
AJAX apps across webservers. Pen needs to be "sticky" and remember its
clients because otherwise connections get dropped as all web accesses
get split between servers (using -r is not an option for us)

How long does pen remember hashed clients? We have two servers (server1
and server2). If a client connects and is awarded server1 he always
seems to be given a connection to server1 every time he starts a new
session, where he sticks for the entire session. Likewise with users who
are awarded with server2 for their first connection.
Will users ever be able to start a brand new session on the other server
sometime in the future - or will they always be sent to the server they
were given the first time (unless that server is down) ?

I'm not too worried if clients are always sent to a particular server,
but I imagine (rare) cases where many users all given one server may log
in at the same time and the other server may be completely idle.
Received on Wed Nov 01 2006 - 03:46:48 CET