Patent ID: 7260599

Claim:
A method in a network for processing an application request for a distinguished application, comprising: in a client computer system, using an agent specific to the distinguished application to intercept an application request for the distinguished application issued by a client for the distinguished application executing on the client computer system; sending to a coordinating computer system a routing request identifying the client computer system and the distinguished application; in the coordinating computer system: receiving the routing request; retrieving a list of server computer systems on which servers for the distinguished application are executing; subsetting the retrieved list based upon the identity of the first computer system; and returning the subsetted list to the client computer system; in the client computer system: receiving the subsetted list; selecting a server computer system from the subsetted list; negotiating a compression method and an encryption method with the selected server computer system; compressing the intercepted application request using the negotiated compression method; encrypting the compressed application request using the negotiated encryption method; transmitting the compressed and encrypted application request to the selected server computer system; in the selected server computer system: receiving the compressed and encrypted application request; decrypting the received application request using the negotiated encryption method; decompressing the decrypted application request using the negotiated compression method; and using the agent specific to the distinguished application to pass the decrypted and decompressed application request to a server for the distinguished application executing on the selected server computer system.