SIMULTANEOUS REDIRECTING AND LOAD BALANCING

The present disclosure describes methods and systems for enabling simultaneous redirection and load-balancing of data packets to network elements in a network environment. In one embodiment, a data packet is received at a network element. The network element identifies a traffic bucket corresponding to the data packet. The traffic bucket includes a matching criterion that identifies a subset of network traffic to map to a node. The data packet is redirected, based on the traffic bucket, from a first address contained in a field of the data packet to a second address that corresponds to the node. The data packet is forwarded to the second address.