The load balancers take communications addressed to a single virtual IP address, and share them out amongst a large fleet of back-end servers, so each users requests go consistently to a single server ...

In my limited research (and knowledge in this area, in general), I've come up with the Nexland Pro800 Turbo load balancing router. It can be had for around $300-$400 it looks like.

Need a sanity check on this one - the layout is fairly simple - a router on each side (speaking bgp, full table), GigE link on each side to a low end Cisco switch, two FastE links between the ...