Patent · US Expired

Loading balancing across servers in a computer network

US6351775B1 · kind B1 · utility

786Cited by
9References
75Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventor

Key dates

Filing dateMay 30, 1997
Grant dateFeb 26, 2002
Priority date
Expiry dateMay 30, 2017

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04L67/1012
  • WIPO fieldDigital communication
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A dynamic routing of object requests among a collection or cluster of servers factors the caching efficiency of the servers and the load balance or just the load balance. The routing information on server location can be dynamically updated by piggybacking meta information with the request response. To improve the cache hit at the server, the server selection factors the identifier (e.g. URL) of the object requested. A partitioning method can map object identifiers into classes; and requester nodes maintain a server assignment table to map each class into a server selection. The class-to-server assignment table can change dynamically as the workload varies and also factors the server capacity. The requester node need only be informed on an “on-demand” basis on the dynamic change of the class-to-server assignment (and thus reduce communication traffic). In the Internet, the collection of servers can be either a proxy or Web server cluster and can include a DNS and/or TCP-router. The PICS protocol can be used by the server to provide the meta information on the “new” class-to-server mapping when a request is directed to a server based on an invalid or obsolete…

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.