Patent ID: 7082471

Claim:
A method of dispatching an IP datagram comprising socks traffic on a socks server, in an Internet Protocol (IP) network comprising a plurality of socks servers said method comprising the steps of: in a socks dispatcher; retrieving a value of a Type Of Service (TOS) field from the IP header of the IP datagram; determining one or a plurality of socks servers defined for the value of the Type of Service (TOS) field retrieved from the IP datagram, one or a plurality of Type of Service (TOS) values being defined for each socks server; determining an application level protocol of data transported in the IP datagram, the application level protocol being defined for each value of the Type of Service (TOS) field; and if more than one socks server is defined for the value of the Type of Service (TOS) field retrieved from the IP datagram, forwarding the IP datagram to a socks server selected according to one or a plurality of selection parameters, one selection parameter being the application level protocol previously determined.