Method and apparatus for providing decentralized load distribution
AssigneeGeneral Instrument Corporation
InventorDouglas Makofka
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The present invention discloses a method and apparatus for providing decentralized load sharing, e.g., providing a protocol that can be used to address load balancing without the need of a central proxy device. Specifically, in one embodiment, the present invention addresses the decentralized load sharing problem, by allowing a group of servers to detect when more than one server attempts to process the same “work request” from a client. To address the potential conflict, each server will implement a back-off strategy for negotiating which server will actually process the work request.
Claims20
A method for servicing a request, comprising:
- receiving a broadcasted request from a client;
- delaying for a period of time;
- announcing a claim for servicing the request;
- determining whether a potential collision has been detected for serving the request;
- and
- servicing the request if said potential collision is resolved.
A computer-readable carrier having stored thereon a plurality of instructions, the plurality of instructions including instructions which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform the steps of a method for servicing a request, comprising of:
- receiving a broadcasted request from a client;
- delaying for a period of time;
- announcing a claim for servicing the request;
- determining whether a potential collision has been detected for serving the request;
- and
- servicing the request if said potential collision is resolved.
An apparatus for servicing a request, comprising:
- means for receiving a broadcasted request from a client;
- means for delaying for a period of time;
- means for announcing a claim for servicing the request;
- means for determining whether a potential collision has been detected for serving the request;
- and
- means for servicing the request if said potential collision is resolved.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.