I enjoyed the article. I found it interesting, however, that this is based on work that came out in 2004. Here is the link to Tovey's 2004 article, "The Honeybee Algorithm": http://ormstomorrow.informs.org/archive/fall04/Tovey%20artic...

The article is very verbose. They only answer the 'how' question at the very end (burying the lead?). Apparently it's some kind of weighted work pool:

Tovey and Nakrani set to work translating the bee strategy for these idle Internet servers. They developed a virtual "dance floor" for a network of servers. When one server receives a user request for a certain Web site, an internal advertisement (standing in a little less colorfully for the dance) is placed on the dance floor to attract any available servers. The ad's duration depends on the demand on the site and how much revenue its users may generate. The longer an ad remains on the dance floor, the more power available servers devote to serving the Web site requests advertised.

How does this differ from existing load balancing techniques? For example, MediaTemple's GridService serves a collection of websites from one or more clusters of servers. They claim to be Slashdot/Digg proof.

The Honeybee strategy sacrifices speed for reliability. Try selling that strategy to a client!