Much like the last time we added a new node we've been looking for the right server for a while. One that offers very high IPC (instructions per clock) but also has lots of threads for handling a high volume of simultaneous connections. We believe we've found both of those qualities in our new node we're calling RHEA.

We now have four nodes in the cluster and they are spread out across three countries. And the two servers that are in the same country are hundreds of miles apart. We also have two nodes that aren't in the cluster day-to-day but can be inserted within a few seconds in the event multiple meteor strikes hit all the datacenters we use.

But we haven't only been working to add a new cluster node. Over the past month we've been optimising our post-processing inference engine which runs exclusively on STYX which was a new dedicated server we added in February. We've been able to significantly improve performance which means the server is scaling to meet our increasing daily demands.

In addition to these changes we've been working on improving our infrastructure. We've invested in an entirely new load balancing method. We setup our own nameservers and can now perform anycast DNS based geographic routing. Which means in the future when we enable this capability we will be able to direct you to one of our cluster nodes that is physically closest to you.

Although these are all under the hood changes they have taken a significant amount of capital and development time to achieve. They're not very glamorous but are important for the longevity of the proxycheck.io service. And all of it was delivered without a single second of downtime.

Thanks for reading and we hope everyone is having a great week.