Patent ID: 8004971
Filing Date: 2011-08-23
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. An apparatus for routing at least one flow of packets over a network comprising: (a) a transceiver arranged to receive and forward each packet in a flow of packets; and (b) a processor, coupled to the transceiver, that is arranged to perform actions, including: (i) if at least one received packet in the flow of packets is associated with a traffic manager, forwarding the flow of packets to the associated traffic manager; and (ii) if each received packet in the flow of packets is unassociated with the traffic manager, performing actions, including: (A) selecting another traffic manager; (B) associating said another traffic manager with the flow of packets, wherein each received packet in the flow of packets is forwarded to said another traffic manager; and wherein selecting another traffic manager further comprises basing the selection in part on at least one of a round trip time (RTT), a least connections, a packet completion rate, a quality of service, a traffic management device packet rate, a topology, a global availability, a hop metric, a hash of an address in a received packet, a static ratio, a dynamic ratio, a source IP address, a destination IP address, a port number, and a round robin mechanism.