Patent ID: 7805517

Claim:
A method for load-balancing a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) network, comprising: receiving a SIP request from a source device; selecting one of a plurality of SIP servers including a first SIP server based on a plurality of performance scores, each of the plurality of performance scores determined as a function of a plurality of weighted performance parameters of a corresponding one of the plurality of SIP servers, the selecting including setting the performance score of the first SIP server equal to a predetermined value upon determination that a CPU percentage usage parameter of the first SIP server is greater than a first predetermined threshold or that a memory availability parameter of the first SIP server is less than a second predetermined threshold, the selecting including automatically generating a random integer and comparing the random integer with a sum of two or more of the performance scores for corresponding SIP servers, the selecting including detecting failures of the SIP servers using the performance scores, the selecting further including preventing the first SIP server from being chosen as a selected SIP server to perform the SIP request when the performance score of the first SIP server is the predetermined value; and forwarding the SIP request to the selected SIP server.