Disclosed is a system and method for distributing connections among a
plurality of servers at an Internet site. All connections are made to a
single IP address and a local director selects the server from among the
plurality of servers which is to receive the connection. Thus, the DNS
server is not relied upon to distribute connections, and the connection
distribution scheme is not avoided when DNS is bypassed. In one
embodiment, a session distribution scheme is implemented such that
connections are distributed to the server in the group of servers which
has the fewest connections of the group. In other embodiments, other
session distribution schemes which route connections based on the
predicted response times of the servers or according to a round robin
scheme are used.