Patent ID: 7826359

Claim:
A system comprising: a chassis interconnect; a physical network interface; a first computer, a second computer, and a third computer communicatively coupled with each other via the chassis interconnect, wherein the first computer, the second computer, and the third computer share the physical network interface (NIC), and wherein the first computer comprises a load balancer, a first virtual network interface card (VNIC), a second VNIC, and a third VNIC, wherein the second computer comprises a first target host, a fourth VNIC, and a monitoring agent configured to monitor a virtual network stack (VNS) to determine the queued packet information for the first target host, wherein the first target host comprises the VNS and wherein the queued packet information comprises a number packets queued in the VNS, and wherein the third computer comprises a second target host and a fifth VNIC; and a network express manager configured to implement a first virtual wire, a second virtual wire, and a third virtual wire using a virtual switching table, wherein the first virtual wire connects the physical NIC to the first VNIC, wherein the second virtual wire connects the second VNIC to the forth VNIC, and wherein the third virtual wire connects the third VNIC to the fifth VNIC, wherein the load balancer is configured to: obtain a packet from the physical NIC, obtain queued packet information for the first and second target hosts, select the first target host using the queued packet information, and send the packet to the first target host using the second virtual wire; and wherein the monitoring agent is configured to send the queued packet information to the load balancer using a fourth virtual wire, wherein the fourth virtual wire connects a sixth VNIC on the first computer with a seventh VNIC on the second computer.