Patent ID: 7694011

Claim:
A method for distributing traffic from an end node in a packet switched network to a cluster of service gateway nodes that host subscriber-aware application servers, comprising the steps of: receiving a control plane message for supporting data plane traffic from a particular subscriber; determining a particular service gateway node among the cluster of service gateway nodes based on policy-based routing (PBR) for the data plane traffic from the particular subscriber, wherein the PBR includes a unique network identifier for the particular subscriber, the unique network identifier being used to determine a next hop network address for a message associated with the particular subscriber; and wherein determining the particular service gateway node further comprising: determining the unique network identifier for the particular subscriber, providing the unique network identifier to a policy-based routing engine that determines a next hop network address for a message based on the unique network identifier; and receiving the next hop network address from the policy-based routing engine; and determining the particular service gateway node based on the next hop network address; sending a message based on the control plane message to a control plane process on the particular service gateway node, whereby data plane traffic and control plane traffic from the same subscriber are directed to one or more related gateway nodes of the cluster of service gateway nodes.