Patent ID: 7774403

Claim:
A system in a distributed object environment that supports server connection concentration, comprising: a plurality of connection handlers to handle a plurality of connections from a plurality of clients to a plurality of remote servers; and a listener, running on one or more microprocessors, which determines which particular connection handler of the plurality of connection handlers to handle a particular connection; wherein the listener upon receiving a request from a client of the plurality of clients to invoke an object on a remote server of the plurality of remote servers performs steps of: first checking to see if any connection handler currently handles a connection to the remote server; choosing a least burdened connection handler to balance a load among all available connection handlers; starting a connection handler to handle the request, if no existing connection handler can handle the connection; and connecting the remote server to another connection handler and updating a shared memory of the plurality of connection handlers, if the corresponding connection handler cannot handle the connection; receiving an object reference from the remote server, wherein the object reference contains connection information at the remote server; associating the object reference with the connection handler that handles the connection to the remote server; calling an object binding routine to bind the object reference, together with host, port, and client identifier parameters; and invoking the connection handler to forward the request to the remote server and reply to the client.