Load balancing in a network environment
US6327622A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Sep 3, 1998 |
| Grant date | Dec 4, 2001 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Sep 3, 2018 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04L67/1036
- WIPO fieldDigital communication
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A method is provided for load balancing requests for an application among a plurality of instances of the application operating on a plurality of servers. A policy is selected for choosing a preferred server from the plurality of servers according to a specified status or operational characteristic of the application instances, such as the least-loaded instance or the instance with the fastest response time. The policy is encapsulated within multiple levels of objects or modules that are distributed among the servers offering the application and a central server that receives requests for the application. A first type of object, a status object, gathers or retrieves application-specific information concerning the specified status or operational characteristic of an instance of the application. Status objects interact with instances of the load-balanced application and are configured to store their collected information for retrieval by individual server monitor objects. An individual server monitor object illustratively operates for each server operating an instance of the application and retrieves the application-specific information from one or more status objects. A central repl…
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.