> The Router is an optional and [experimental](../development/experimental.md) feature due to the fact that its recommended place in the Druid cluster architecture is still evolving.
> However, it has been battle-tested in production, and it hosts the powerful [Druid Console](../operations/druid-console.md), so you should feel safe deploying it.
The Apache Druid Router process can be used to route queries to different Broker processes. By default, the broker routes queries based on how [Rules](../operations/rule-configuration.md) are set up. For example, if 1 month of recent data is loaded into a `hot` cluster, queries that fall within the recent month can be routed to a dedicated set of brokers. Queries outside this range are routed to another set of brokers. This set up provides query isolation such that queries for more important data are not impacted by queries for less important data.
In addition to query routing, the Router also runs the [Druid Console](../operations/druid-console.md), a management UI for datasources, segments, tasks, data processes (Historicals and MiddleManagers), and coordinator dynamic configuration. The user can also run SQL and native Druid queries within the console.
The Router has a configurable list of strategies for how it selects which Brokers to route queries to. The order of the strategies matter because as soon as a strategy condition is matched, a Broker is selected.
Queries with a priority set to less than minPriority are routed to the lowest priority Broker. Queries with priority set to greater than maxPriority are routed to the highest priority Broker. By default, minPriority is 0 and maxPriority is 1. Using these default values, if a query with priority 0 (the default query priority is 0) is sent, the query skips the priority selection logic.
This strategy reads the parameter `brokerService` from the query context and routes the query to that broker service. If no valid `brokerService` is specified in the query context, the field `defaultManualBrokerService` is used to determine target broker service given the value is valid and non-null. A value is considered valid if it is present in `druid.router.tierToBrokerMap`
Allows defining arbitrary routing rules using a JavaScript function. The function is passed the configuration and the query to be executed, and returns the tier it should be routed to, or null for the default tier.
> JavaScript-based functionality is disabled by default. Please refer to the Druid [JavaScript programming guide](../development/javascript.md) for guidelines about using Druid's JavaScript functionality, including instructions on how to enable it.
All Avatica JDBC requests with a given connection ID must be routed to the same Broker, since Druid Brokers do not share connection state with each other.
To accomplish this, Druid provides two built-in balancers that use rendezvous hashing and consistent hashing of a request's connection ID respectively to assign requests to Brokers.
Note that when multiple Routers are used, all Routers should have identical balancer configuration to ensure that they make the same routing decisions.
This balancer uses [Rendezvous Hashing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous_hashing) on an Avatica request's connection ID to assign the request to a Broker.
This balancer uses [Consistent Hashing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_hashing) on an Avatica request's connection ID to assign the request to a Broker.
This is a non-default implementation that is provided for experimentation purposes. The consistent hasher has longer setup times on initialization and when the set of Brokers changes, but has a faster Broker assignment time than the rendezvous hasher when tested with 5 Brokers. Benchmarks for both implementations have been provided in `ConsistentHasherBenchmark` and `RendezvousHasherBenchmark`. The consistent hasher also requires locking, while the rendezvous hasher does not.
In this example, we have two tiers in our production cluster: `hot` and `_default_tier`. Queries for the `hot` tier are routed through the `broker-hot` set of Brokers, and queries for the `_default_tier` are routed through the `broker-cold` set of Brokers. If any exceptions or network problems occur, queries are routed to the `broker-cold` set of brokers. In our example, we are running with a c3.2xlarge EC2 instance. We assume a `common.runtime.properties` already exists.
