Directing clients based on communication format

A non-transitory computer program product embodied in a computer readable storage medium of a traffic management device, and comprising computer instructions, which when executed by one or more processors of the traffic management device perform a method of redirecting client requests, the method comprising:

• receiving, a request for content from a client that has been directed or redirected to the traffic management device as a result of a first domain name of a content publisher of the content being configured to point to a second domain name associated with the traffic management device via a canonical name (CNAME) record of a domain name system (DNS), wherein the content is hosted by a plurality of servers including a first server that hosts the web page content in a first communication format and a second server that hosts the web page content in a second communication format;
• selecting the first server or the second server to service the request based on (i) a traffic management policy specified by the content publisher and (ii) performance expected to be provided to the client as a result of communicating with the client via the first communication format as compared to communicating with the client via the second communication format;
• and
• redirecting the client to the selected server.