Patent ID: 7475160

Claim:
A method for distributing state information throughout a network including two Global Request Manager (“GRM”) servers and two GRM agents; the method comprising: receiving, at a first GRM server, a Domain Name Service (“DNS”) request from a client to obtain a network address corresponding to a domain name; in response to the DNS request, transmitting a probe instruction from the first GRM server to a first GRM agent and a second GRM agent, to cause the first GRM agent and the second GRM agent to estimate their network proximity to the client, wherein the first GRM agent and the second GRM agent are designed to estimate network proximity; transmitting a response from the first GRM server to the client, said response to indicate a closest device of the first GRM agent and the second GRM agent based on a best guess by the first GRM server of a closest device of the first GRM agent and the second GRM agent; receiving, at the first GRM server, proximity estimates from the first GRM agent to the client and the second GRM agent to the client, said proximity estimates made in response to the probe instructions; receiving, at a second GRM server, the proximity estimates, wherein the two GRM agents transmit the proximity estimates to the second GRM server automatically in response to the DNS request and wherein only the first GRM server is aware of the DNS request; and updating a first database at the first GRM server and a second database at the second GRM server with the proximity estimates, wherein the first GRM server and the second GRM server do not communicate directly to share the proximity estimates from the first GRM agent and the second GRM agent.