Patent ID: 11929897
Assignee: VMWARE LLC
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 7:
8. A method for balancing a service load across a set of servers using a plurality of load balancers, the method comprising:
using an underlay controller, programming a set of switches in a network to perform multicast distribution of packets by:
determining that a packet comprises a special header corresponding to a multicast (“MC”) group;
determining that the special header includes an identifier of a switch in the set of switches;
identifying a bitmap associated with the identifier of the switch; and
using the bitmap, determining one or more ports of the switch to replicate the packet on;
using agents, sending multicast packets to the plurality of load balancers via the set of switches by including the special header, the multicast packets including load statistics data of the set of servers;

at least one of the plurality of load balancers:
receiving a multicast packet replica comprising load statistics data of the set of servers,
receiving a task; and
distributing the task to one of the servers based at least in part on the load statistics data.