Patent ID: 8732332

Claim:
A content switch managed by a network provider that routes packets associated with a document to one of a plurality of application providers, wherein each application provider is a trusted customer, as defined by a contract, of the network provider, in a computer based communications system using instructions recorded on a non-transitory storage medium, the non-transitory storage medium comprising: instructions in the content switch that send the document to a parser, the document referencing a location of a corresponding schema; instructions in the parser that fetch the corresponding schema from the location, wherein the fetched schema comprises: a plurality of elements, wherein a particular element in the fetched schema is also found in the sent document, a particular routing rule that redirects the packets to a particular server when a value of the particular element in the sent document matches a predefined value of the particular element in the fetched schema, and a default routing rule that redirects the packets to a default server when the value of the particular element in the sent document does not match the predefined value of the particular element in the fetched schema; instructions in the parser that validate the sent document according to the fetched schema; instructions in the parser that pass the validated document to a routing instruction processor; instructions that interpret the routing rules in the schema, wherein the content switch executes the routing rules; instructions in the content switch that use the interpreted routing rules to redirect the packets associated with the document to either the particular server or the default server; and instructions in the content switch that check whether the schema respects terms of the contract.