Patent ID: 8024476

Claim:
A method performed by a computer system for efficiently routing messages to a front end server of a server pool, the server pool comprising multiple front end servers, the method comprising: receiving a first message from a client computing device indicating to open a dialog, the first message sent to a domain name identifying the server pool; selecting a front end server of the server pool, the front end server having a server domain name; modifying a header field of the first message to add an indication of the server domain name of the selected front end server in the header field so that each subsequent message of the dialog is sent to the selected front end server based on the indication of the server domain name; adding a header field value indicating a role for the front end server, wherein the role is either From or To, wherein a From front end server is a server in a server pool of a sender of the first message and a To front end server is a server in a server pool of a recipient of the first message, wherein an application is configured to perform processing based on the indicated role; forwarding the modified first message to the selected front end server to open the dialog between the client computing device and the selected front end server; receiving subsequent messages of the dialog from the client computing device; detecting the selected front end server only from the indication of the server domain name contained in a header field of the subsequent messages; and forwarding the subsequent messages to the selected front end server based on the indication of the server domain name contained in the header field of the subsequent messages, wherein a first path the first message transits to the selected front end server is different from a second path the subsequent messages transit to the selected front end server.