Patent ID: 7480711

Claim:
An apparatus for efficiently forwarding client requests in a distributed computing environment, comprising: one or more network interfaces; a processor; a memory; computer program code stored in a storage medium, wherein the computer program code comprises a socket module comprising computer-readable instructions operative to cause the processor to receive a plurality of client requests for forwarding; a time estimates generator comprising computer-readable instructions operative to cause the processor to dynamically generate, concurrent to and during processing of each client request, time estimates of service availability based on a time-to-idle for sending the client requests over each of a plurality of managed network connections to a remote node, wherein time-to-idle for each managed network connection is calculated based on the amount of time that will elapse before an active managed network connection is usable for a subsequent client request; and a network connection manager comprising computer-readable instructions operative to cause the processor to select the managed network connection to the remote node with a substantially highest service availability and a substantially lowest time-to-idle and forwarding each client request to the remote node using the selected managed network connection.