A technology for indicating and determining the availability of a multitude of
application servers. The method comprises for each of application server a first
step of inserting into an availability database a notification period defining
an upper time limit for a repetition period of an availability signal, which is
repeated as long as the application server is available. In a second step for each
availability signal its corresponding time stamp is inserted as availability time
into the availability database. The difference of the current time and a recent
availability time compared to said notification period is representing a measure
of availability for the application servers.