A method for sharing state between load balancers of a computer system including a router and a load balancing system, the load balancing system including a load balancer, one or more other load balancers (106B, 106C), and a plurality of destination hosts, the router connected to a network and being a point of ingress into the load balancing system, components on the network using a virtual electronic address to communicate with the load balancing system, the method comprising: receiving, by the load balancer, a packet from the router, the packet containing source electronic address information identifying a source on the wide area network and destination electronic address information including the virtual electronic address; determining, by the load balancer, that the packet is for an existing data flow; using, by the load balancer, an algorithm to generate a data flow identifier for the existing data flow from the packet contents, including the packet headers; determining, by the load balancer, that the load balancer lacks sufficient information to identify the destination host, from among the plurality of destination hosts, that corresponds to the existing data flow, including: determining, by the load balancer, that the load balancer does not have any cached state mapping the existing data flow to one of the destination hosts in the plurality of destination hosts; in response to the determination that the load balancer lacks sufficient information to identify the destination host that corresponds to the existing data flow: identifying, by the load balancer, an owner load balancer that is designated as the owner of the existing data flow, the owner load balancer selected from among the one or more other load balancers; characterized in sending, by the load balancer, the packet to the owner load balancer; receiving, by the load balancer, state information from the owner load balancer, the state information identifying the destination host that corresponds to the existing data flow; caching, by the load balancer, the received state information; receiving, by the load balancer, a second packet for the existing data flow; referring, by the load balancer, to cached state information to identify the destination host as corresponding to the existing data flow; and sending, by the load balancer, the second packet to the destination host. receiving, by the load balancer, a packet from the router, the packet containing source electronic address information identifying a source on the wide area network and destination electronic address information including the virtual electronic address; determining, by the load balancer, that the packet is for an existing data flow; using, by the load balancer, an algorithm to generate a data flow identifier for the existing data flow from the packet contents, including the packet headers; determining, by the load balancer, that the load balancer lacks sufficient information to identify the destination host, from among the plurality of destination hosts, that corresponds to the existing data flow, including: determining, by the load balancer, that the load balancer does not have any cached state mapping the existing data flow to one of the destination hosts in the plurality of destination hosts; in response to the determination that the load balancer lacks sufficient information to identify the destination host that corresponds to the existing data flow: identifying, by the load balancer, an owner load balancer that is designated as the owner of the existing data flow, the owner load balancer selected from among the one or more other load balancers; characterized in sending, by the load balancer, the packet to the owner load balancer; receiving, by the load balancer, state information from the owner load balancer, the state information identifying the destination host that corresponds to the existing data flow; caching, by the load balancer, the received state information; receiving, by the load balancer, a second packet for the existing data flow; referring, by the load balancer, to cached state information to identify the destination host as corresponding to the existing data flow; and sending, by the load balancer, the second packet to the destination host.