Welcome to the continuing series on the ABC's of Networking.  In the "B is for BIND" post, I referenced the BIGipCookie which is a perfect lead-up for today's post.  Today's letter of the day is "C" and for it I chose Cookie Persistence.  BIGipCookie just happens to be the cookie name that the BIG-IP uses for it's implementation of cookie persistence.

"C" is for Cookie Persistence

Cookie Persistence

Pronounced: Kook-ee Per-sis-tuh ns

Persistence is the mechanism of connecting a single client connection to a single node in a server farm.  Cookie persistence is a mode of persistence where a load balancing system transparently stores persistence connection information in a browser cookie.  All subsequent requests from that browser will include the information needed for the load balancer to connect that user to the same application server.  Cookie persistence remains the most reliable method of non-secure HTTP persistence.