A network management system has a network monitor arranged to monitor the load
on elements of a computer network and to reconfigure the network when necessary
to optimize its performance. The network configuration is carried out by servers
in the network in response to an appropriate instruction from the network monitor.
The servers operate to divert traffic from overloaded elements in the network by
modifying both source and destination addresses of the transmitted data packets.
In this manner the processing or database loads can be spread optimally among a
plurality of servers in the network.