Patent ID: 9660909
Date: 2017-05-23
CPC Classifications: H04L,H04W

Claim:
1. A method for load balancing based on metadata in a network service header, the method comprising: receiving, at a load balancer in a service path, a packet or frame of a traffic flow, wherein the packet or frame has a payload and the network service header including metadata and service path information for the traffic flow identifying the service path, the metadata comprises classification information of the packet or frame, and the classification information has application information associated with the traffic flow; extracting, by a service header processor of the load balancer, the application formation; receiving, at the load balancer, an encoding scheme of the application information; and applying, by a load balancing function of the load balancer, a load balancing policy on the packet or frame based on the application information to distribute traffic flows across a plurality of servers.