Patent ID: 8321503

Claim:
A system for directing requests to a computing device that comprises resources relevant to responding to the requests, the system comprising: a first server computing device comprising a first set of resources; a second server computing device comprising a second set of resources that differ from the first set of resources; a domain exposing a network-based application program interface for accessing a domain set of resources comprising the first set of resources and the second set of resources through successively more specific requests utilizing the network-based application program interface; and a first back-end locator service for identifying one of the first server computing device or the second server computing device to receive subsequent requests directed to a specific resource from the domain set of resources, the first back-end locator service performing the identifying based on whether the specific resource is in the first or second set of resources; wherein both the first server computing device and the second server computing device can equally receive and respond to requests directed to a top-level of the domain; wherein the domain set of resources is accessed, at least in part, through resource identifiers, the resource identifiers having pre-appended to them identifications of the first server computing device or the second server computing device after the identifying by the first-back end locator service; and wherein the first server computing device invokes the first back-end locator service if the first server computing device receives a location-independent request directed to the second set of resources and the second server computing device invokes the first back-end locator service if the second server computing device receives a location-independent request directed to the first set of resources.