Patent ID: 8489750

Claim:
A load-balancing cluster comprising: (A) a switch having a plurality of ports; and (B) a plurality of servers connected to at least some of the plurality of ports of the switch, each of said servers being addressable by the same virtual Internet Protocol (VIP) address, wherein each of said plurality of servers comprises: a mechanism constructed and adapted to respond to a connection request at the VIP address by selecting one of said plurality of servers to handle that connection, wherein said selecting is based, at least in part, on a first given function of information used to request the connection; a firewall mechanism constructed and adapted to accept all requests for the VIP address for a particular connection only on the server that has been selected to handle that particular connection; a mechanism constructed and adapted to determine, when a server has been selected and when a request for a resource has been made, whether the server is responsible for the request for the resource, said determining being based, at least in part, on information associated with the request for the resource; and a handoff mechanism constructed and adapted to handoff a network connection to another of said plurality of servers and to accept a handoff request from another of said plurality of servers, wherein the handoff mechanism determines whether to handoff a network connection or to accept a handoff request based on at least one attribute associated with the requested resource, wherein the at least one attribute associated with the requested resource comprises at least one of the size of the requested resource and the popularity of the requested resource, wherein the handoff mechanism is configured to accept a handoff request if the size of the requested resource exceeds a threshold value, wherein the handoff mechanism is configured to reject a handoff request if the size of the requested resource does not exceed a threshold value.