A signaling network routing node, such as a signaling system 7
(SS7)/Internet protocol (IP) gateway, is adapted to perform global title
translation (GTT) or other processing on received signaling messages and
route the signaling messages to a member of a load sharing group using a
threshold-based weighted load sharing algorithm. In the event that one of
the signaling destinations in the load sharing group becomes unavailable,
signaling message traffic is redistributed evenly among the remaining
available members of the load sharing group in a manner such that a
maximum load sharing weight threshold value associated with each group
member is not exceeded. If a load sharing group member becomes
unavailable, and the resulting recalculated load sharing weights of the
remaining available members sum to less than 100%, then load sharing
weights for the group are normalized, and a maximum message rate capacity
threshold associated with each group member is used to determine whether
the discarding of messages is required.