Transparent client-server transaction accelerator

• US 20040215746A1
• Filed: 08/12/2003
• Published: 10/28/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 04/14/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Riverbed Technology, LLC (Riverbed Technology Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: NBT Technology, Inc.
• Inventors: Wu, David Tze-Si, McCanne, Steven, Demmer, Michael J., Jain, Arvind
• Granted Patent: US 8,069,225 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/219
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/12 Discovery or management of network topologies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/01 Protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/2876 Pairs of inter-processing entities at each side of the network, e.g. split proxies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/56 Provisioning of proxy services store-and-forward switching systems in data switching networks H04L12/54
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/564 Enhancement of application control based on intercepted application data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/5651 Reducing the amount or size of exchanged application data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/12 Protocol engines
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/40 for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity, e.g. service redundancy protocols, protocol state redundancy or protocol service redirection management of faults, events, alarms or notifications in data switching networks H04L41/06

Abstract

In a network that conveys requests from clients to servers and responses from servers to clients, a network transaction accelerator for accelerating transactions involving data transfer between at least one client and at least one server over a network comprising a client-side engine, a server-side engine and a transaction predictor configured to predict, based on past transactions, which transactions are likely to occur in the future between the client and server. The transaction predictor might be in the server-side engine, the client-side engine, or both. The client-side engine receives indications of requests from the client, a transaction buffer for storing results of predicted transactions received from the server or the server-side engine ahead of receipt of a corresponding request, and a collator for collating the requests from the client with the stored results or received results, wherein a request and a response that are matched by the collator are identified and the matched response is provided to the client in response to the matched request. The server-side engine receives indications of transactions including requests and responses and conveys requests to the server in response to actual transactions or predicted transactions.

Claims

1. A network transaction accelerator for accelerating transactions involving data transfer between at least one client and at least one server over a network, wherein a transaction involves a request and at least one response in response to the request, the network transaction accelerator comprising:

a client-side engine coupled to a client;

a server-side engine, coupled to the server;

a transaction predictor that is configured to predict, based on past transactions, which transactions are likely to occur in the future between the client and server;

wherein the client-side engine comprises;

a) an input for receiving indications of requests from the client;

b) a transaction buffer for storing results of predicted transactions received from the server or the server-side engine ahead of receipt of a corresponding request; and

c) a collator for collating the requests from the client with the stored results or received results, wherein a request and a response that are matched by the collator are identified and the matched response is provided to the client in response to the matched request; and

wherein the server-side engine comprises;

a) an input for receiving indications of transactions including requests and responses; and

b) an output for conveying requests to the server in response to actual transactions or predicted transactions.

2. The network transaction accelerator of claim 1, wherein the transaction predictor is within the server-side engine.

3. The network transaction accelerator of claim 1, wherein the transaction predictor is within the client-side engine, the client-side engine further comprising logic to transmit one or more messages to the server-side engine indicating which transactions are being predicted and the server-side engine further comprising logic to receive the one or more messages and generate requests corresponding to predicted transactions and convey those requests to the server in advance of receipt of requests corresponding to requests of predicted transactions.

4. The network transaction accelerator of claim 1, further comprising as part of the client-side engine a first persistent segment storage and a first segment encoder and as part of the server-side engine a second persistent segment storage and a second segment encoder.

5. The network transaction accelerator of claim 4, further comprising means for conveying segment mappings between the first persistent segment storage and the second persistent segment storage.

6. The network transaction accelerator of claim 1, further comprising:

a transaction mapping table that maps transaction identifiers of actual requests and transaction identifiers of synthetic requests to mapped transaction identifiers, such that responses to requests are uniquely identifiable by their mapped transaction identifiers even when transaction identifiers of synthetic requests might overlap with transaction identifiers of actual requests; and

a transaction mapper that maps transaction to a mapped transaction identifier and replaces the transaction'"'"'s identifier as received by the network transaction accelerator with the mapped transaction identifier for received requests that are forwarded toward the server and replaces the mapped transaction identifier with the replaced transaction identifier for responses that are returned toward the client.

7. The network transaction accelerator of claim 1, wherein the transaction predictor comprises:

a prediction database comprising records of past transactions and relationships among past transactions; and

a predictor module that determines, from a received transaction and contents of the prediction database, which transactions are likely to occur in the future.

8. The network transaction accelerator of claim 7, wherein the predictor module operates using a Markov model.

9. The network transaction accelerator of claim 7, wherein the predictor module operates using heuristics.

10. The network transaction accelerator of claim 7, wherein the predictor module takes into account impact on the network of results of predicted transactions in determining a measure of aggressiveness for predictions.