Patent ID: 7984181

Claim:
A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium encoded with instructions, wherein the instructions when executed comprise: receiving prepare messages at a computer system from target servers, wherein the prepare messages indicate that the computer system is to prepare the computer system for incoming calls from clients; adding addresses of the target servers to a queue at the computer system in response to the receiving the prepare messages from the target servers; preparing a network interface for the incoming call requests and sending replies to the target server in response to the prepare messages; receiving a first incoming call request at the computer system from a first client via the network interface; selecting one of the addresses in the queue and removing the one of the addresses from the queue, in response to the receiving the first incoming call request from the first client; sending the first incoming call request to one of the target servers associated with the one of the addresses, wherein the first incoming call request creates a tunnel from the first client to the one of the target servers and the first client communicates across the tunnel to the one of the target servers, wherein the tunnel comprises a control connection and a session, wherein the tunnel carries encapsulated point-to-point protocol datagrams; and removing all of the addresses associated with the one of the target servers from the queue in response to a close request from the one of the target servers.