Patent ID: 7940768

Claim:
A method performed on a computing system positioned as an endpoint coupled to a network, comprising: a) assigning a source network address to an outbound packet created by application software that is operating on said computing system and engaged in a communicative session with another endpoint of said network, associating said outbound packet with a network service and identifying a first network interface of said computing system associated with said network service, wherein meta data referred to by program code that causes transport and/or networking layer services to be performed for said packet contains an identifier of said first network interface; b) inquiring into and confirming that said first network interface is associated with said source network address; c) constructing a search key from an identifier of said first network interface and said outbound packet's destination address; d) submitting said search key to a routing function, said routing function providing said outbound packet's next hop address; and, e) transmitting said outbound packet to a node identified by said next hop address from said network interface.