Patent ID: 7774484

Claim:
A method of maintaining a communication between a client device and a target on a network having a plurality of targets, the method comprising: (a) receiving, from the client device, a first message; (b) determining the target for the client device from the plurality of targets; (c) receiving, from the client device, a second message, the second message comprising a plurality of packets; (d) extracting a persistence key from the second message, the extracting comprising: i. buffering at least two of the plurality of packets to form buffered content, the buffered content being at least a subset of the message; ii. extracting a first data from the buffered content, wherein the first data is not a port number and not a network address, and wherein the first data spans at least two of the packets in the buffered content; iii. extracting a second data from exactly one of the plurality of packets, wherein exactly one of the first data and the second data comprises data received within a secure communication protocol handshake, and exactly one of the first data and the second data comprises data received outside of the secure communication protocol handshake; iv. combining at least the first data and the second data to create the persistence key; and v. identifying the target for the client device based on the persistence key.