METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR LOAD-BALANCED DATA EXCHANGE IN DISTRIBUTED NETWORK-BASED RESOURCE ALLOCATION

A method and system for allocating distributed resources connected to a computer network to application programs running on computers attached to the communications network. The distributed resource allocator system comprises a number of identical processes running on one or more computers attached to the communications network. Application programs request allocation of resources from a local distributed resource allocator system process running using a resource allocator applications programming interface. Application programs request allocation of resource from a remote distributed resource allocator system process via a resource allocator access protocol. The distributed resource allocator system is fault-tolerant and provides contention control and load balancing. The resource allocator system also manages information about the capacities and capabilities of resources connected to the communications network. Application programs can thus be easily written to make use of distributed resources connected to a communications network without having to manage global network information and without needing complex contention control and load balancing subroutines.