Patent ID: 7908355

Claim:
A load-balancing method, comprising: providing a network that includes a plurality of non-load balancing network servers connected between an Internet access LAN and a back-end access LAN, and a network load balancer for selecting one of the network servers according to performance metrics based on weights that are associated with the network servers, where the Internet access LAN is connected to the Internet through an Internet access router and the back-end access LAN is connected to a plurality of database access servers; cyclically monitoring, by every one of the plurality of network servers, availability of external links connected to a corresponding network server by attempting, by the corresponding network server, to contact each of a plurality of various network targets outside the network in turn; setting a status indicator associated with the network server to up if all the links that have been cyclically monitored are available, and setting the status indicator to down if at least one of the links is unavailable; sending the status indicator to the load balancer; and changing a weight associated with the network server in the load balancer to an ineligible value if the status indicator has changed from up to down since the status indicator was last received by the load balancer.