Patent ID: 6853642

Claim:
An apparatus for load balancing the processing of service requests between at least two service component instances, the apparatus comprising: means for associating a first ticket amount with a first instance and a second ticket amount with a second instance; means for scheduling said first instance to receive a service request and means for decrementing said first ticket amount, if said first ticket amount is greater than a threshold amount and said first instance is selectable from the at least two service components instances under a round-robin selection scheme, or if said first instance is the only instance within the at least two instances having a ticket amount greater than said threshold amount; and means for scheduling said second instance to receive said service request and means for decrementing said second ticket amount, if said second ticket amount is greater than said threshold amount and said second instance is selectable from the at least two service components instances under a round-robin selection scheme, or if said second instance is the only instance within the at least two instances having a ticket amount greater than said threshold amount.