FIG. 1 is an illustration of a computing environment 100 in accordance with one embodiment of the invention. The computing environment 100 includes a client 110, a load balancer 120, and a server pool 139 connected by a communications network (not shown). In various embodiments, the communications network is a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), a wireless network, an intranet, or the Internet, for example.

In various embodiments, the client 110 is a user computing device, such as a computer, a personal digital assistant (PDA), or a wireless telephone, that is equipped with a browser 111 for retrieving and displaying web pages. The browser 111 of the client 110 sends requests which comprise a collection of data packets used to establish a connection between the client 110 and a server so that subsequent streams of data can be exchanged. The requests can be provided in a variety of different forms, depending on the particular network and communications protocol. For example, for an environment using Internet protocols, the requests would be via TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) over IP (Internet Protocol); an environment using a non-IP protocol (e.g., a cellular phone network), other protocols would be used. Although only one client 110 is shown in FIG. 1 for simplicity, in practice, there would be large numbers (e.g., thousands, perhaps millions) of clients 110, each having a respective browser 111, present in the computing environment 100. For the purposes of explanation only then, an embodiment based on using TCP will be described.