CLIENT-SIDE METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR IMPROVING THE AVAILABILITY AND PERFORMANCE OF NETWORK MEDIATED SERVICES
First Claim
1. A method for a client agent to establish communication between a client location and a destination location comprising the steps of:
- receiving a request for communication from said client location;
analyzing the content of said communication request;
determining an optimal communication path based on said analyzing; and
attempting to establish communications along said optimal path.
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
An intelligent local client agent can passively keep track of the state of network intermediaries, and can allocate network traffic according to different policies. In addition, an optional management platform running on a policy server provides an active network monitor of intermediaries and implements administrative policies. Under the present invention, an intermediary-aware application (e.g., a browser) will be configured to use the local client agent instead of an intermediary. The policy server can remotely load configuration information into a running client agent to provide administrative constraints or state changes. At each client agent, the intermediary servers (e.g. SOCKS servers) are ranked into tiers, so that several servers in the top-rated tier can be used concurrently to provide better performance. When the performance of a server degrades, its tier rating is lowered, and thus it may be avoided. Administratively defined tiers can be used to reserve resources for mission critical applications. Each client agent may passively collect local statistics on observed performance. The policy server may aggregate and evaluate the collected data, and use it as metrics to improve the tier groupings to the client agents, in order to provide better utilization of shared resources.
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Citations
22 Claims
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1. A method for a client agent to establish communication between a client location and a destination location comprising the steps of:
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receiving a request for communication from said client location;
analyzing the content of said communication request;
determining an optimal communication path based on said analyzing; and
attempting to establish communications along said optimal path. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19)
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15. A client agent for establishing communications between a client location and a destination location comprising:
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receiver component for receiving a request for communication from said client location;
processing means for analyzing the content of said communication request and for determining an optimal communication path based on said analyzing; and
communication component for attempting to establish communications along said optimal path.
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20. A communication system for a first client computer location to establish communication with at least one other computer location comprising:
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at least one client agent associated with said first client computer location; and
at least one management server for sharing communication information with said at least one client agent.
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21. An article of manufacture comprising:
a computer usable medium having computer readable program code embodied therein for establishing communication between a client location and a destination location, the computer readable program code in said article of manufacture comprising;
computer readable program code for receiving a request for communication from said client location;
computer readable program code for analyzing the content of said communication request;
computer readable program code for determining an optimal communication path based on said analyzing; and
computer readable program code for attempting to establish communications along said optimal path. - View Dependent Claims (22)
Specification