Patent ID: 8078755

Claim:
A method for enabling communication between nodes, the method comprising: receiving, at a server, a SYN packet forwarded from a load-balancing node, wherein the SYN packet (a) indicates a virtual address associated with a server cluster as a destination address of the SYN packet and (b) indicates a client address of a client from which the SYN packet originated as a source address of the SYN packet; the server being one of a plurality of servers in the server cluster being load-balanced by the load-balancing node; and sending, from the server to the client, a SYN/ACK packet that (a) indicates a physical non-virtual address of the server as a source address of the SYN/ACK packet, (b) indicates the client address as a destination address of the SYN/ACK packet, and (c) indicates a binding update destination option that specifies the virtual address as a home address; receiving, with the server, an ACK packet sent from the client; wherein the server and the load-balancing node each comprise one or more computing devices.