System and method for selecting virtual appliances in communications with virtual private cloud networks

A method for facilitating communications between client devices in geographically separated networks, comprising:

• responsive to detecting a message and failing to locate a particular Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Layer 2 address of a destination for the message based on prior messages from a client device,
• selecting a first virtual appliance of the one or more virtual appliances for handling a forwarding of an Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) request message to a plurality of remote networks, and
• forwarding the ARP message via the selected virtual appliance to a plurality of gateways associated with a plurality of remote networks to recover the OSI Layer 2 address of the destination corresponding to a virtual machine within a cloud network;
• and
• responsive to locating the particular OSI Layer 2 address associated with the destination of the message, selecting the virtual appliance previously handling communications with the destination to forward the message to the destination.

A method for facilitating communications between client devices in geographically separated networks, comprising:

• detecting a message of a first message type by a routing device operating as a default gateway within a local network, the local network including a plurality of virtual appliances;
• upon failing to locate a Media Access Control (MAC) address of a destination for the message within a table by the default gateway,
• selecting a virtual appliance of the plurality of virtual appliances for handling a forwarding of a request message to one or more remote networks, and
• forwarding the request message via the selected virtual appliance to one or more gateways associated with the one or more remote networks to receive the MAC address of the destination;
• and
• upon locating the MAC address of the destination within the table, a virtual appliance of the plurality of virtual appliances previously handling communications with the destination is selected to forward the message to the destination.