Patent attributes
A system can include a gateway, a plurality of network function nodes, and a distributed load balancer including load balancer nodes each having a flow table portion stored thereon. The load balancer nodes can form a node chain having a tail and head nodes. A load balancer node can receive a packet from the gateway. In response, the load balancer node can generate a query, directed to the tail node, that identifies the packet and a network function identifier associated with a network function node that is proposed to handle a connection. The tail node can determine whether an entry for the connection exists in a flow table portion associated with the tail node. If not, the tail node can initiate an insert request for writing the entry for the connection via the head node. The entry can then be written to all load balancer nodes in the node chain.
