Intelligent switching of client packets among a group of servers
US8122146B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Apr 14, 2010 |
| Grant date | Feb 21, 2012 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | May 8, 2030 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04L67/10015
- WIPO fieldDigital communication
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
The content-aware application switch and methods thereof intelligently switch client packets to one server among a group of servers in a server farm. The switch uses Layer 7 or application content parsed from a packet to help select the server and to schedule the transmitting of the packet to the server. This enables refined load-balancing and Quality of-Service control tailored to the application being switched. In an exemplary embodiment of the invention, a method includes maintaining a server load metric for each server in a group of servers; parsing application content from a packet; selecting a destination server from the group of servers, wherein selecting the destination server is dependent on the server load metric for each server, assigning a priority to the packet, the priority being dependent on the application content; and dropping the packet if the priority comprises at least one of a predetermined type.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.