Abstract: The present invention relates to a system and method for information retrieval related to a service. According to an embodiment of the present invention, two separate types of packets may be received to indicate information which is required. One type of packet is intended for information which may be directly looked up in a table, such as a routing table, while the other type of packet is intended for information which requires calculating or measuring metrics. Accordingly, if information which may be directly looked up in a routing table is requested along with information regarding metrics which need to be measured or calculated, then the routing table information is sent as soon as the requested information is looked up and the measured metric information is sent later when the requested metric is measured.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a system and method for selecting a service in a network, such as the Internet. According to an embodiment of the present invention, a user, such as a network administrator, may configure the system and method of the present invention to determine a “best” service based on a user configured metric. Examples of user configured metrics include director response protocol (DRP) external metrics, DRP internal metrics, DRP server metrics, DRP multi-exit discriminator (MED), and DRP round trip time (RTT). Metric information is herein meant to include any criteria used to select a “best” service. Examples of metric information include portion, random, and administrative costs, as well as DRP external metrics, DRP internal metrics, DRP server, DRP MED, and DRP RTT. The service associated with the best metric information is then selected as a resolution for the requested host name.

Abstract: An embodiment of the present invention is a system and method for selecting a mirrored service in a network, such as the Internet, by utilizing a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) attribute. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the BGP attribute, which may be stored in a border router, is accessed for each mirrored service for a prefix associated with the user requesting a host name. The attributes from each mirrored service are compared with each other to determine a “best” attribute which meets a predetermined criteria. The mirrored service associated with the best attribute is then selected as a resolution for the host name.

Abstract: A method and system for distributing a service request among a plurality of servers is disclosed. A portion metric is assigned to each one of the plurality of servers, the portion metric designating a portion of total server requests to be allocated to the one of the plurality of servers. A server request may then be received. A total number of server requests processed by the plurality of servers is incremented and a number of server requests distributed to each one of the plurality of servers is maintained. The server request is then distributed to one of the plurality of servers using the portion metric assigned to each one of the plurality of servers, the number of server requests distributed to each one of the plurality of servers, and the total number of server requests.