Patent ID: 8086709

Claim:
A method of handling incoming service requests in an application server comprising a set of equal traffic modules, each being capable of handling requests for one or more multimedia services implemented in the application server, wherein each traffic module is associated with a specific port number corresponding to an internal private network address of the traffic module, the method comprising the following steps: receiving an initial service request of a session from a requesting subscriber; applying a load balancing function capable of selecting basically any traffic module in the set of traffic modules, to assign a traffic module for processing the received initial service request; sending a response to the initial service request back to the requesting subscriber, said response including the port number associated with the assigned traffic module; receiving a subsequent service request of the same session from said subscriber including a port number that the subscriber has added to a destination address of the subsequent service request; and applying a port mapping function that maps the port number given in the received subsequent service request to the internal private network address of the previously assigned traffic module, for processing the received subsequent service request.