Patent ID: 6873616

Claim:
A method for a node to select a gateway from among at least two gateways, comprising the steps of: storing information associating a metric with each gateway with respect to each of one or more destinations; upon receiving a connection request to a destination, the further steps of: i) deterministically selecting a first gateway having an optimum metric with respect to the destination, ii) sending a connection request to the first gateway, iii) if a connection can not be established to the destination via the first gateway, randomly selecting a second gateway from among the gateways other than the first gateway, and iv) sending a connection request to the second gateway; and wherein the connection request contains zero or more identifiers identifying domains through which the connecting route has already passed, the step of deterministically selecting a first gateway does not select a gateway leading to a domain indicated by the identifiers in the connection request, and the step of randomly selecting a second gateway does not select a gateway leading to a domain indicated by the identifiers in the connection request.