Patent ID: 7685312

Claim:
A method for locating a free resource comprising: maintaining an address space containing a plurality of ranges of addresses; determining free resources available to each server of a plurality of servers; dividing the address space into the plurality of ranges of addresses proportional to the free resources available to each server; obtaining a mapping between the plurality of servers and the plurality of ranges of addresses; transmitting a request for the free resource from a client to a randomly-selected address in a range of the plurality of ranges of addresses, wherein the request from the client identifies the randomly-selected address, and wherein the client randomly selects the randomly-selected address from the address space; identifying a server of the plurality of servers to obtain a selected server, wherein the server is identified based on the mapping to the range of the plurality of ranges of addresses comprising the randomly-selected address, and wherein a second range of the plurality of ranges of addresses overlaps the range comprising the randomly-selected address; and directing the request for the free resource to the selected server.