Patent ID: 8881167

Claim:
In a system comprised of a network routing calls between a plurality of nodes wherein a node participates in a call as a caller or a receiver and wherein a load balancer sends telephony requests associated with calls to a plurality of servers, a method for directing telephony requests associated with calls to said servers, the method comprising the steps of: pre-assigning each of the plurality of nodes as a member of one of a plurality of groups such that each of the groups has a plurality of members and the respective memberships of at least two of the groups are non-identical; receiving, at the load balancer, a telephony request associated with a first node of the plurality of nodes; determining if the group assigned to the first node is mapped to one of the servers, and selecting a server of the plurality of servers to process the received telephony request based on the determination, the selecting comprising: when the determination is positive, selecting the mapped server; and when the determination is negative, identifying which of the servers has a least number of groups mapped thereto, mapping the group assigned to the first node to the identified server, and selecting the identified server; and sending the received telephony request to the selected server for processing.