System and method for performing message-based load balancing

A system and method for message based load balancing comprises receiving, at a network traffic management device, an encapsulated request from a client device to a destination server for an established session. The request is encapsulated in accordance with a first connection-oriented protocol. The encapsulated message is segmented into a plurality of encapsulated data segments in accordance with a message boundary parameter. Identifying information of a first payload data packet of a first TCP encapsulated data segment is extracted and the first payload data packet is converted into a first connection-less protocol datagram. A message-based load balancing decision is performed on the datagram to assign the datagram to a first server. The first connection-less protocol datagram is converted into a first encapsulated data packet in accordance with a second connection-oriented protocol and is sent from a first virtual server to the first server based on the message-based load balancing decision.