Internet Federated web server?

Question

I'm not sure what to call this...

What I would like to do is have a web server that is capable of serving pages from separate servers across the internet (not a local network).

eg, If I visit http://www.example.com I will be serving data from a machine in America. If I visit http://www.example.com/ServiceB the machine will be serving from a machine in Brazil, just as http://serviceC.example.com would call the server in Canada.

What would I need to do to achieve this? Is there a name for what I'm trying to do? Logically to me this would be called a federated web server... But I cannot find anything for that on google.

Answer 1

I think @Shiki is in the ballpark. 'proxy' or 'gateway' is where you need to search. You are not building a federate, you're acting describing more of a gateway.

Try reading up on apache mod_proxy. It may be what you are after.

Answer 2

Could you just make CNAME values? For instance, could http://www.example.com point to a North American server, and http://es.example.com could point to a South American server, and http://eu.example.com could point to a European server, etc.