Patent ID: 8751661

Claim:
A method of sticky routing of user connections to a distributed service comprising multiple data centers, the method comprising: for each of the multiple data centers, establishing multiple associated user buckets, wherein all service requests from all users in a given bucket are routed to the associated data center, and wherein each user bucket has only one of three states: online, wherein an online bucket is available to receive new users; offline, wherein users assigned to an offline bucket are expelled from the bucket; and closed, wherein a closed bucket is not available to receive new users and users assigned to a closed bucket are not expelled from the bucket; receiving a first service request from a first device operated by a first user; assigning the first user to a first user bucket that is online, wherein the first user bucket is associated with a first data center; storing first sticky routing data for the first user, wherein the first sticky routing data comprises: a member ID; an identifier of the first user bucket; and a generation of the first user bucket; and routing the first service request to the first data center.