Patent ID: 7047301

Claim:
A method for enabling a client to access a resource on a wide area network environment, comprising: (a) receiving a request for the resource from a connection that is associated with the client; (b) selecting a method for load balancing each request from the connection, wherein the selected load balancing method employs modulus arithmetic to select a virtual server managed by a selected server array controller, including: converting a LDNS server's IP address into a first value; dividing the first value by the total amount (N) of virtual servers that are available, each available virtual server corresponding to a particular value of N; adding one to a remainder of the dividing action to create a second value; and selecting the virtual server that corresponds to the particular value of N that is one greater than the second value; (c) employing the selected method to select one of a plurality of server array controllers to handle each request from the connection to the resource; and (d) persistently referring each request associated with the connection to the selected server array controller until another method is selected for load balancing each request from the connection, wherein the selected server array controller associates the client's connection with the requested resource.