Load balancing and failover of network services

A method for dynamically reassigning computing services to various hosts in a network including the steps of:

• establishing a service group for each computing service including a unique Internet Protocol address assigned to each of a plurality of host computers so that the computing service is available as long as one of the plurality of hosts is available within the service group;
• assigning responsibility for a computing service to a first host computer within the service group;
• transmitting periodically among the host computers of the service group messages through a service group address representative of the state of at least the first host computer;
• receiving through a service group address from the remaining host computers within the service group messages representative of the state of such remaining host computers;
• evaluating the presence or absence of such messages and their contents;
• and
• reassigning to another host, within the plurality of computers, responsibility for the computing service in response to such evaluation.

Apparatus for providing dynamic reallocation of computing services within a network including a plurality of hosts comprising:

• a service group including a plurality of at least three hosts each available to provide a desired computing service including a unique Internet Protocol address assigned to each of the plurality of at least three hosts so that the computing service is available as long as one of the plurality of hosts is available within the service group;
• a message portion configured to provide data through a service group address, where the data concerns the state of each of the plurality of hosts;
• and
• a leader portion configured to assign responsibility through a service group address for each of the computing services to any host within the service group in response to the message portion.