Patent ID: 7225237

Claim:
A method for providing a persistent connection between a client and a real server, the method comprising: providing a local director in communication with a plurality of clients and two or more real servers, said plurality of clients configured for communication with said two or more real servers through said local director; receiving at said local director a request originating from a first client of said plurality of clients for connection to a virtual server implemented on the local director; identifying a natural class of an IP address of said first client; determining if the local director has received and sent out connection requests from any client of said plurality of clients, having the same natural class as said first client by searching a table stored on the local director and identifying previous connections created between the local director and said two or more real servers; if the local director has received and sent out a connection request to one of said real servers from any client having the same natural class as said first client, selecting the same real server for connection with said first client, wherein selecting a real server comprises selecting the same real server for all clients having the same natural class subnet; if the local director has not received and sent out a connection request to one of said real servers from any client having the same natural class as said first client, selecting one of said real servers based on load balancing; and forwarding to the selected real server transmissions originating from said first client; wherein receiving a request comprises receiving a request from a firewall and wherein the IP address of a device sending the request is the IP address of the firewall.