Patent ID: 7603463

Claim:
A method of allocating processing capacity of system processing units in an extranet gateway, the method comprising the steps of: establishing a first initial expected available processing bandwidth of a first of the system processing units, the first expected available processing bandwidth representing a first amount of VPN tunnel bandwidth which the first of the system processing units is expected to be able to handle; establishing a second initial expected available processing bandwidth of a second of the system processing units, the second expected available processing bandwidth representing a second amount of VPN tunnel bandwidth the second of the system processing units is expected to be able to handle; and assigning a Virtual Private Network (VPN) tunnel to one of the first and second system processing units for processing according to estimated current available bandwidths of the first and second system processing units, the estimated current available bandwidths being estimated by assessing the initial expected available bandwidths for each system processing unit and decrementing the initial expected available bandwidth of each system processing unit by other processing requirements assigned to that respective system processing unit; wherein the step of assigning the VPN tunnel to one of the first and second system processing units looks to assign the VPN tunnel to the system processing unit with the highest estimated current available bandwidth, the highest current available bandwidth being based on an absolute bandwidth capacity basis, the absolute bandwidth being calculated by determining which system processing unit has a largest amount of estimated current available bandwidth; wherein the first initial expected available bandwidth is established by determining whether the first system processing unit is an accelerator or a central processing unit (CPU); and wherein if the first system processing unit is a CPU, the step of establishing the first initial expected available bandwidth comprises determining a type of CPU and CPU speed, obtaining a first conversion factor for the type of CPU, and multiplying the conversion factor with the CPU speed.