At block 216, when all M load balancing nodes 108A-M report that there are no more old in-progress connections so that no traffic arrives with the old IP address 114, 9.0.0.1, the updating is completed. In order to complete the updating, rules in traffic distributors 104 with the old IP address may be removed. For example, rule 116 with the old IP address 114, 9.0.0.1, may be removed from traffic distributors 104. The load balancing nodes and backend pool nodes that are no longer needed may be released. For example, for N less than M, load balancing nodes 108N+1 to 108M and, for W2 less than W1, backend pool nodes 110W2+1 to 110W1 may be released. It should be noted that there may be no direct correlation between changes in the number of backend nodes 110 and changes in the number of load balancing nodes 108. Elasticity of the backend node pool may be autonomous of the elasticity of the load balancing node pool. The present communications systems and methods may include any type of backend node pool elasticity and any type of load balancing node pool elasticity. In addition, it should be noted that at this point the old IP address 114, 9.0.0.1, may now be released and may be reused for further version updates in a broader sense of version.