• HTTP/1.1, HTTP/1.0 backward compatible
• Supports HTTP, LiteSpeed SAPI, FastCGI and AJPv13 back ends
• Load balance algorithms: round-robin, least load, least session
• Session affinity with fail-over
• Directing request based on domain names, request URL, Cookie, SSL Session, etc.
• Content aware: route request based on request content
• Dynamic response compression/decompression (gzip)
• Gzip compression with backend HTTP Server
• Automatic HTTP protocol upgrade/downgrade to maintain persistent connection with backend servers
• Massive shared hosting: load balance to millions of websites
• URL rewrite
• SSL acceleration
• Geotargeting support
• IPv6 support
• Anti-(D)DoS attacks capability
• Request filtering (HTTP firewall), filter attacking requests based on request content
• Chroot for enhanced security
• Backend server health monitoring
• Web administration console
• Online upgrade to keep your server up-to-date

LiteSpeed load balancer is designed to be a secure load balancer. With chroot jail, IP level bandwidth throttling, connection accounting, strict HTTP request checking, and URL context filtering, DoS effects are minimized and backend cluster is properly fenced away from the HTTP request layer reducing vulnerability.

• High performance Secure HTTP (HTTPS): supports SSLv2, SSLv3 and TLSv1
• IP level throttling (Bandwidth and Request Rate)
• Comprehensive IP level connection accounting
• Hotlink protection
• Strict HTTP request checking
• External application firewall for dynamic content
• Chroot whole server process

• Zero downtime maintanance (include reconfiguration, software upgrade)
• Watch dog and Instant recovery maximizes up-time
• Graceful shutdown, all requests in process will be completed.
• Runs completely in the user space, OS reliability is not affected

Request size is limited by the Max Request URL Length, Max Request Header Length, and Max Request Body Length values. Strict Static File Checking LiteSpeed web server will serve a static file only if the following conditions are satisfied:

• "/.ht*" and "/.svn*" are not allowed in a decoded URL, this will deny accessing some important hidden files and directories.
• the file permission must contain configured required permission bits.
• the file permission must not contain any configured restricted permission bits.
• The file is not in the Access Denied Directory list
• does not contain symbolic links if symbolic linking is not allowed.
• LiteSpeed load balancer does not index a directory by listing its files.

LiteSpeed load balancer can pipeline requests and control the concurrency level of external applications to prevent over consumption of system resources. It only forwards completed requests to external applications and caches the response. Thus external applications will be immediately available to process the next request without waiting for the response to be completely received by the client. In this way, the server can utilize fewer instances of external applications to serve more concurrent requests and will achieve higher performance and scalability. LiteSpeed load balancer uses its own virtual memory to cache the request and response body to minimize the usage of system memory without sacrificing performance.

Chroot Jail

LiteSpeed load balancer can run in a chroot environment also known as a chroot jail with an automatic initial chroot environment setup. In a chrooted environment, the load balancer and its children processes cannot access the file system outside of the chroot jail. This protects the system from attacks caused by malicious code.