1. A method, comprising: receiving at a terminal of a satellite communication system a load balancing table transmitted over a home carrier; selecting one of a plurality of system segments in accordance with load information included in said received load balancing table, wherein the selecting is performed independently and without knowledge of segment selections made by other terminals in the satellite communication system, and without transmitting a load balancing request to a hub of said satellite communication system; selecting a bandwidth manager from one or more bandwidth managers included in the selected system segment; extracting from the load balancing table one or more descriptors corresponding to a forward channel corresponding to the selected system segment; tuning to the forward channel of the selected segment using the extracted descriptors; sending from the terminal a logon request to the hub; and selecting a traffic processing server from one or more traffic processing servers included in the selected system segment.