Patent ID: 7177945

Claim:
An arrangement for serving information requests, comprising: a plurality of informational servers connected to a communications network, all of the informational servers having a common address on the communications network and serving a set of information to clients, each of the informational servers being configured to receive a transaction request associated with an individual transaction and to provide a response to each transaction request; and a content director connecting the informational servers to the communications network and distributing transaction requests among the informational servers comprising: a flow switch that parses plain text transaction requests to locate selected packet payload fields, selects, based on the plain text packet payload fields, an appropriate informational server to service each transaction request, and thereafter forwards at least portions of the parsed transaction requests to a selected one of the informational servers; and a cryptographic module that decrypts, prior to parsing and informational server selection by the flow switch, cipher text transaction requests and provides plain text transaction requests to the flow switch, wherein, prior to decryption, the cipher text transaction requests have not been routed by another flow switch.