METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR A TCP/IP LOAD BALANCING AND FAILOVER PROCESS IN AN INTERNET PROTOCOL (IP) NETWORK CLUSTERING SYSTEM

摘要

The present invention is a method and apparatus for monitoring packet loss activity in an Internet Protocol (IP) network clustering system which can provide a useful, discrete and tangible mechanism for controlled failover of the TCP/IP network cluster system. An adaptive interval value is determined as a function of the average packet loss in the system, and this adaptive interval value used to determine when a cluster member must send a next keepalive message to all other cluster members, and wherein the keepalive message is used to determine network packet loss.