Patent ID: 8086714

Claim:
A load balancing system having a hierarchical structure in which each layer includes one or more nodes and processing requests are sequentially transmitted from higher-layer nodes to lower-layer nodes and in which any one of said nodes acts as a load balancer thereby to distribute the processing requests to tail-end nodes, said hierarchical structure comprising: a load balancing node in a first layer, to distribute a processing request to another node; a first node in a second layer lower than said first layer, receiving the processing request distributed by said load balancing node; at least one second node in a third layer lower than said second layer; and a master node other than said first node and said second node comprising: a load balancing information receiver which receives predetermined load balancing information held in said second node from said first node or said second node, a load balancing information storage which stores said load balancing information for all nodes included in said hierarchical structure, wherein said load balancing information for said first node includes status information of all of said at least one second node in one or more paths where the processing request is transmitted from said first node, a processor which determines advisability of distributing the processing request to said first node by said load balancing node, in response to whether all of said at least one second node in one or more paths where the processing request is transmitted from said first node is in fault or not, and a transmission advisability notification transmitter which transmits, to a node acting as said load balancing node distributing the processing request to said first node, an advisability notice indicating the advisability of distributing the processing request to said first node.