Patent ID: 7519710

Claim:
A method of distributing requests from a client node to servers of a server system having a plurality of servers, the method comprising periodically repeating the steps of: a) measuring server activity of each server to obtain measured server activities; b) assessing relative loadings of the plurality of servers from the measured server activities; c) adjusting a distribution of requests to individual servers of the plurality of servers in accordance with the assessing of the relative loadings by adjusting a proportion of the requests assigned to each server as a function of the measured server activities, a mean activity across the plurality of servers, and an existing proportion of the requests assigned to the respective server; d) the measuring step being performed by counting a number of the server requests sent to each of the plurality of servers, and counting a number of the server responses received from each server over a sample period; and e) configuring the sample period to be an aggregate number of requests sent to the plurality of servers.