Methods, systems and computer program products provide communications with
a plurality of application instances using a plurality of communication
protocol stacks and a single Internet Protocol (IP) address. A stack is
established as a routing stack associated with the single IP address.
Other stacks which are associated with the single IP address are defined
as candidate target stacks and an identification of candidate target
stacks and the routing stack is distributed to the stacks. The routing
stack is notified when an application associated with a candidate target
stack listens to a port of the IP address to establish a current actual
target stack. A request to establish a connection to the IP address and
the port of the IP address is received and a routing table entry
corresponding to the current actual target stack is created to provide a
routing path from the routing stack to the current actual target stack.
Communications to the port of the IP address received by the routing
stack are routed based on the routing table.