Patent ID: 7860095

Claim:
A method of routing a message to a load-balancing element, comprising at the load-balancing element: extracting from a stream a message conveyed in the stream through a point-to-point connection to a load balancing element; detecting in the extracted message the presence of a destination identifier identifying one of a plurality of available processing systems each connected to the load-balancing element by separate point-to-point connections; and where the presence of the destination identifier is detected, forwarding the message to the processing system identified thereby via the appropriate connection; otherwise detecting in the extracted message a message identifier for identifying related messages; searching a database of message identifiers for which no destination identifiers were detected, the database having information indicating to which one of the available processing systems each such message having no destination identifier was forwarded; determining a destination processing system for processing the message; inserting into the message an identifier identifying the determined destination processing system; and forwarding the message to the processing system via the appropriate connection.