Content-Based Routing Explained: How It Works and Why It Matters

Have you ever clicked on a link and arrived on a page you wanted? That is often the result of content-based routing. Content-based routing describes a method for how servers determine where to send your request to keep it responsive and fast.

How Content-Based Routing Works​

Content based routing does not just examine the URL or the web address you are trying to access; content based routing looks at the information that your request contains. It works sort of like a smart mail sorter: before you sort mail, you need to know something about the package in order to know where to deliver it.

In the case of a website, the server will look at things such as:

• URLs pathways like /videos /shop
• Browser or language preferences
• Data collected in app or forms

Then, the server will send your request to the site which can best handle your request.

Why It's Helpful​

Websites such as e-commerce websites have thousands of users and traffic coming and going constantly. Content based routing helps by making sure that the website is rendering requests quickly. In other words, all video requests go to servers that are set up well for streaming video, and the pages for blog items are routed to servers that are set up for text. This allows the website not to slow down on certain pages. When I worked on a project, I can tell you from experience, it felt like the website was "trying to know" where I wanted to go before I even clicked as it was incredible tool to speed up the site load times.

Real World Example​

Imagine you have video and blogs on your website:

• The requests for video content will go to a server that is good at serving video.
• The requests for blogs will go to a server that is good at displaying articles.

This will ensure that the many video users will not jeopardize the blog sites.

You can achieve this by employing:

• Load balancers with rules applied
• API gateways examining incoming requests
• Service meshes, when you have a more complex setup

All of these technologies will route the request to the proper server.

Advantages​

• Faster website: Every request will be routed to a server that was made to accommodate requests for that specific resource.

• More reliable website: You will have less delays in serving your users, because your other server is too busy when it arrives at the web request.

• Easier to scale - You just add more servers to the videos or to the blogs

Conclusion​

Content-based routing is a smart way to route traffic to users. It allows everyone to have a nicer, faster website. So, the next time you are on a fast website, it may contain a content-based solution under the surface. If you want your website to better manage the traffic, this is where I would recommend you to start and consider.