METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR DISPATCHING RECEIVED SESSIONS BETWEEN A PLURATLITY OF INSTANCES OF AN APPLICATION USING THE SAME IP PORT

摘要

A logical module, referred as Load Balancer Module (LBM), is disclosed which listens to one of certain common predefined port number. These well-known ports for receiving communication video conference signaling and control protocols is thereafter load balanced and multi-plexed to a number of instances of protocol stack applications. By balancing the multi-media data stream across a multitude of application instances multiple multi-media data streams may be serviced and processed by a single internet protocol host processor. A mutipoint control unit (MCU) may therefore process multiple input data streams containing multi-media video conferencing information.

主权项

1. A method of load balancing a plurality of instances of processes supporting one or more conferences over a network comprising:
instantiating a load balancing module on a processing unit; instantiating one or more instances of a protocol stack on the processing unit in response to a request from the load balancing module; receiving at the processing unit data packets over a network from a plurality of endpoints; selecting an instance from the one or more instances of the protocol stack to process each received data packet, the selected instance corresponding to an endpoint from the plurality of endpoints; associating, by the load balancing module, the endpoint with the selected instance during a conference; transferring the received data packets toward the associated instance independently of the load balancing module; receiving data packets unassociated with an instance of the protocol stack; instantiating, at the request of the load balancing module, a new instance of the protocol stack, the new instance associated with an endpoint; and passing the unassociated data packets to the new instance.