Patent ID: 6871210
Filing Date: 2005-03-22
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. In a computing system comprising a plurality of clients and boot servers, and a DHCP/PXE server, a method in said DHCP/PXE server for allocating a boot server to a requesting client characterized in that a least loaded boot server is prioritized for service by: maintaining a boot Server Allocation Table (SAT) containing a listing of boot servers and an existing client load count for each boot server, maintaining a Client Allocation Table (CAT) associating client IP addresses with corresponding boot server IP addresses, prioritizing the boot servers by sorting said listing in an ordered sequence of increasing load count whenever one of the load counts is updated, and providing the IP addresses of the boot servers in the sequence of their listing in said SAT for access whenever a client requests the DHCP/PXE server, wherein said SAT is updated to increment a particular boot server load count whenever that boot server sends an acknowledge (ACK) to a requesting client and wherein said CAT is updated to include an entry associating the requesting client with a particular boot server IP address whenever a boot server sends an ACK to the requesting client.