Patent ID: 7284067

Claim:
Apparatus for balancing network traffic among a group of servers, comprising: a plurality of load balancing modules, each load balancing module (a) associated with a different server and (b) having at least two network ports; and an internal network of network segments connecting at least one network port of each load balancing module to a network port of at least one other load balancing module in said plurality of load balancing modules, and coupling every load balancing module, directly or through one or more load balancing modules, to each of the other load balancing modules, at least one of said load balancing modules having a network port coupled to an external network; wherein said load balancing modules are configured in a plurality of zones, each zone comprising a master load balancing module and one or more slave load balancing modules, each master load balancing module balances loads by selecting, from among its own server and servers coupled to its one or more slave load balancing modules, a server to handle a network request; and wherein, if its associated server fails or becomes disconnected, each load balancing module continues to balance loads by transferring a received network request to another load balancing module.