Patent ID: 8130755

Claim:
A load balancing device comprising: a first communications interface structured and arranged to receive a first packet from a first device, the first packet having a source IP address of the first device and a destination IP address corresponding to the load balancing device; a stream manager structured and arranged to: identify that the first packet from the first device includes a request to receive a particular stream of information; identify a content source to support the request, wherein the content source is not hosting the particular stream of information as the request is received on the first communications interface; and dynamically instruct the content source to host the particular stream of information as a result of identifying that the first packet from the first device includes the request to receive the particular stream of information; a first switching processor structured and arranged to half network address translate the first packet into a translated packet having a destination IP address corresponding to a source IP address related to a content source and a source IP address corresponding to the source IP address of the first device; and a second communications interface structured and arranged to transmit the translated packet to the content source with the appearance of origination from the first device so that the content source may respond to the translated packet with a response packet that has a destination IP address of the first device and a source IP address of the load balancing device.