Abstract: Network traffic is distributed between a plurality of networked computers. The traffic comprises requests that are received into the network and replicated to each computer. For each request, each computer makes a decision based on attributes of the request as to whether to process or ignore the request, such that each request is processed by only one computer. Each computer periodically broadcasts a signal to each of the other computers to confirm that it is online. When a first computer is no longer online, the traffic is redistributed amongst the remaining online computers, wherein traffic that is already processed by the remaining computers is not redistributed, traffic that would have been processed by the first computer is split evenly between the remaining computers, and each computer decides independently and identically how to redistribute the traffic without communicating with the other computers.