Patent ID: 8243598

Claim:
A method of routing IP packet flows, the method comprising: coupling an Ethernet switch to a load balancing control engine; configuring load balancing logic within the load balancing control engine to be hidden from the Ethernet switch; the Ethernet switch receiving an IP packet flow, wherein the Ethernet switch routes packets of the IP packet flow to servers from multiple server groups, wherein the multiple server groups comprise a firewall server group, an intrusion detection system (IDS) server group, and an anti-virus application server group; redirecting the IP packet flow to a specific sequence of servers, wherein each server in the specific sequence of servers comes from a different server group from the multiple server groups, and wherein the IP packet flow is redirected to sequentially pass through a selected server from each of the firewall server group, the IDS server group, and the anti-virus application server group; the load balancing control engine determining if the servers are balanced in their utilization; in response to the load balancing control engine determining that the servers are balanced, the Ethernet switch routing the IP packet flow to the servers without the Ethernet switch directly receiving any feedback from the servers regarding their utilization; and in response to the load balancing control engine determining that the servers are unbalanced, the load balancing control engine instructing the Ethernet switch to redirect the IP packet flow to a server that is relatively less busy than other servers.