Patent ID: 8606921

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, by a load balancing device, a packet; determining whether the packet is a Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) packet; identifying, responsive to determining that the packet is an RTP packet, a processing device corresponding to stored addresses matching network addresses associated with the RTP packet; sending the RTP packet to the identified processing device; determining, responsive to determining that the packet is not an RTP packet, whether the packet is a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) packet; extracting, responsive to determining that the packet is a SIP packet, a content identifier of the SIP packet; identifying a first processing device that has processed part of content associated with the content identifier; sending the SIP packet to the first processing device when the first processing device is identified; selecting a second processing device among a plurality of processing devices when the first processing device is not identified; and sending the SIP packet to the second processing device.