Patent ID: 7085829

Claim:
A method for balancing workload in a Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) system that has at least one VoIP client and plural VoIP proxy servers that share workload data therebetween, one of the VoIP proxy servers being a primary VoIP proxy server for the VoIP client, comprising: a) the primary VoIP proxy server receiving a call connection request from the VoIP client; b) the primary VoIP proxy server determining if the primary VoIP proxy server has a workload exceeding a predefined threshold and, if not the primary VoIP proxy server connecting with the client to complete the call, else: i) selecting a delegate VoIP proxy server using the sharing workload data, the delegate VoIP proxy server having a lower workload than at least one other of the plural VoIP proxy servers; and ii) forwarding the request to the selected delegate VoIP proxy server; and c) the delegate VoIP proxy server carrying out b) in place of the primary VoIP proxy server until one of the plural VoIP proxy servers connects with the client to complete the call, the connecting by the delegate VoIP proxy server including transmitting the identity of the delegate VoIP proxy server to the VoIP client.