Method and apparatus for affinity of users to application servers

A method and apparatus route hypertext protocol requests to one of a plurality of application servers, which share a database through a backend database management system. The application servers store session data in the database. Hence, if a subsequent request is routed to a different application server, the session data is available through the backend database management system. One or more web servers perform routing of requests to the application server. When a request is received that is accompanied by a session ID, routing is performed by utilizing a hash function on the session ID. The resulting hash value is mapped to an application server. A hash function on a session ID will always result in the same hash value; therefore, the request will always be routed to the same application server. However, if an application server is non-functional, a new hash based on the previous hash is computed until a functional application server is selected.