System and method of traffic inspection and stateful connection forwarding among geographically dispersed network appliances organized as clusters
US8130747B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Aug 6, 2007 |
| Grant date | Mar 6, 2012 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Apr 25, 2029 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04L67/1014
- WIPO fieldDigital communication
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A peering relationship among two or more network appliances is established through an exchange of control messages among the network appliances. The peering relationship defines a cluster of peered network appliances, and at each network appliance of the cluster traffic flow state information for all the network appliances of the cluster is maintained. Network traffic associated with traffic flows of the network appliances of the cluster is managed according to the state information for the traffic flows. This managing of the network traffic may include forwarding among the network appliances of the cluster (i.e., to those of the appliances handling the respective flows) at least some of the network traffic associated with one or more of the traffic flows according to the state information for the one or more traffic flows. The traffic flows may be TCP connections or UDP flows.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.