the invention relates to a system and method for load - balancing multiple servers in a communications network . instead of using round robin or other predetermined scheme , sip messages are forwarded to one of multiple sip servers according to a performance score that is calculated from measured performance data . advantageously , the disclosed system and method decreases signaling latency , improving overall communications speed . moreover , where performance data indicates that a sip server has failed , the performance score for the failed sip server is zero , and the load balancer will not forward sip messages to the failed sip server . system uptime is also improved .