Systems and methods for load balancing virtual connection traffic

A method comprising:

• establishing a first set of connections between a load balancing appliance and a first set of clients while listening for new connection requests on a first port of the load balancing appliance during a first interval;
• associating tuples identifying the first set of connections with the first port in memory of the load balancing appliance;
• establishing a second set of connections between the load balancing appliance and a second set of clients while listening for new connection requests on a different second port of the load balancing appliance during a second interval after the first interval;
• associating tuples identifying the second set of connections with the second port in memory of the load balancing appliance;
• receiving a data packet at the load balancing appliance;
• forwarding the data packet to the second port in response to at least one header parameter of the data packet being associated with a connection from the second set of connections, wherein the at least one header parameter is associated with the connection from the second set of connections based on a tuple from a header of the data packet matching a tuple of an established connection from the second set of connections and the tuple of the established connection from the second set of connections being associated with the second port;
• and
• forwarding the data packet to the first port in response to the at least one header parameter of the data packet not being associated with a connection from the second set of connections based on one or more tuples from the header of the data packet not matching to the tuples of the second set of connections.

A load balancing appliance comprising:

• a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a set of processor-executable instructions;
• and
• one or more processors configured to execute the set of processor-executable instructions, wherein executing the set of processor-executable instructions causes the one or more processors to:
• receive packets of a connectionless protocol on a particular port of said load balancing appliance;
• distribute, from the particular port to a first process listening on a first port of said load balancing appliance, packets for establishing a first set of virtual connections during a first interval, wherein the first port is different than the particular port;
• distribute, from the particular port to a different second process listening on a different second port of said load balancing appliance, packets for establishing a second set of virtual connections during a later second interval that comes after the first interval, wherein the second port is different than the particular port and the first port;
• receive from the particular port, a connectionless data packet at the second port during the later second interval;
• pass said connectionless data packet from the second port to the first port in response to at least one header parameter of said connectionless data packet not being associated with a connection from the second set of virtual connections;
• and
• route said connectionless data packet from the first port to a particular server of a plurality of servers in response to the at least one header parameter of said connectionless data packet being associated with a particular connection from the first set of virtual connections and said particular server hosting said particular connection.