Patent ID: 7984148

Claim:
A method of load balancing in a network comprising multiple geographic network locations, each of at least two of such locations respectively having a load balancer, the load balancer at one of said locations being referred to as a first load balancer and the load balancer at the other of said locations being referred to as a second load balancer, each of said load balancers having a respective IP address and each load balancer serving as a gateway to respective servers at that location, the method comprising the steps of: polling by at least said first and second load balancers of a polled client located at yet an other network location different from the respective locations of said at least first and second load balancers to determine a hop count related measurement or a round trip latency related measurement, respectively, between each of said at least first and second load balancers and said polled client; collecting by said first load balancer of the measurement information from both said at least first and second load balancers; maintaining by said first load balancer traffic load or capacity information related to servers at its location as well as related to said second load balancer; receiving by said first load balancer of an HTTP request having a destination IP address from a requesting client at said other network location; performing by said first load balancer a selection between said servers at its own location and the at least said second load balancer for servicing said HTTP request, and forwarding of said HTTP request by said first load balancer to at least said second load balancer using the IP address of said at least second load balancer, as the destination IP address of the forwarded HTTP request, when said first load balancer selects said second load balancer to service said HTTP request.