Content delivery for client-server protocols with user affinities using connection end-point proxies

• US 20050125553A1
• Filed: 08/12/2003
• Published: 06/09/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 08/12/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Riverbed Technology, LLC (Riverbed Technology Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: NBT Technology, Inc.
• Inventors: Wu, David Tze-Si, McCanne, Steven
• Granted Patent: US 7,650,416 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/233
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/04 Processing captured monitoring data, e.g. for logfile generation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/12 Network monitoring probes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/01 Protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/20 Services signaling; Auxiliary data signalling, i.e. transmitting data via a non-traffic channel

Abstract

In a network supporting transactions between clients and servers over a network path having operating characteristics to overcome, data is transported to overcome the operating characteristics using user affinities and dynamic user location information to selectively preload data, or representations, signatures, segments, etc. of data, in order to overcome the one or more operating characteristic. Examples of operating characteristics to overcome include bandwidth limitations, errors and latency. The dynamic location information can be stored in data structures accessible by agents of a data server and the data structures are populated based on user activities with respect to proxies associated with user locations, or the dynamic location information can be obtained implicitly as proxies maintain connections after termination by clients and the use of those maintained connections for preloading of data for the users associated with those clients. The data being preloaded can be protocol-specific data or protocol-independent data.

Claims

1. In a network supporting transactions between clients and servers, wherein a client is a host that requests a transaction and a server is a host that issues responses responsive to client requests and wherein packets between a client and a server travel over a network path comprising one or more hops and having one or more operating characteristic to overcome, a method of transporting data to overcome the one or more operating characteristic comprising:

identifying user affinity for a data object, wherein user affinity of the data object indicates which user or users might be associated with the data object such that a user having user affinity to the data object is more likely to requested data object then a user and not having user affinity to the data object;

dynamically identifying user locations, wherein a user location represents an association between a user and preload node, wherein a preload node is a network location wherein preloaded data can be stored to overcome at least one of the one or more operating characteristics;

transporting particular data having a specified user affinity, in advance of a client request on behalf of a particular user having a user affinity for the particular data, from a server to a preload node identified as a user location for the particular user.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more operating characteristics are selected from bandwidth usage, error rate and latency.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the data objects comprise one or more of an e-mail object, a dataset, a file, or a portion of a database.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the user affinity of a data object is to a single user.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the user affinity of a data object is to a plurality of users.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying user affinity comprises:

determining which users access which data objects; and

assigning user affinity to those data objects according to which users access those data objects.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein dynamically identifying user locations comprises:

determining which users, access the network using particular clients;

determining the preload nodes associated with those particular clients; and

populating a user location database with records associating those users with the preload nodes, thereby identifying user locations.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein each preload node is a proxy.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein each preload node includes a data cache.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein each preload node includes a proxy and a segment store.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein dynamically identifying user locations comprises:

intercepting client-server connections for a connection between a first client and a first server initiated by the first client, the interception being at a proxy associated with a preload node;

including a connection end-point proxy (CEP) in a network path over which the connection flows; and

when the CEP detects termination of the connection initiated by the first client;

a) retaining the connection to the first server and injecting synthetic transactions towards the first server, implicitly using the connection to identify a user location of the user associated with the connection; and

b) receiving results of the synthetic transactions, whereby a side effect is that data is stored for use in improving the one or more operating characteristics.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein data objects being requested in the synthetic transactions are associated with users that are a subset of all network users and the subset of clients that are associated with the CEP initiating the synthetic transactions include clients that have been associated with one or more of the subset of users.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the transactions relate to e-mail messages, the synthetic transactions are for transport of e-mail messages associated with a group of one or more recipients and the CEP has indications that at least one of the group of recipients will operate a client that initiates a connection that flows through that CEP, thereby improving the one or more operating characteristics when e-mail data is provided using results of a synthetic transaction.

14. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

when the CEP has maintained the connection after the first client has terminated the connection and the first client initiates a second connection, tearing down the maintained connection using the CEP and establishing the second connection.

15. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

transporting data for a second connection between a second client and the first server or a second server, initiated by the second client, wherein the second connection flows in a network path including the CEP;

when the CEP detects termination of the second connection initiated by the second client;

a) retaining the second connection and injecting synthetic transactions towards a server end of the connection; and

b) storing the results or populating a store usable to regenerate the results at least in part;

when the CEP detects that the second client opens a later connection, using the stored results or populated store in responding to later transactions, thereby improving the one or more operating characteristics for the second client.

16. In a network supporting transactions between clients and servers, wherein a client is a host that requests a transaction and a server is a host that issues responses responsive to client requests and wherein packets between a client and a server travel over a network path comprising one or more hops and having one or more operating characteristic to overcome, a method of transporting data to overcome the one or more operating characteristic comprising:

transporting data for a connection between a first client and a first server initiated by the first client;

including a client connection end-point proxy (client CEP) in a network path over which the connection flows near the first client;

including a server connection end-point proxy (server CEP) in a network path over which the connection flows near the first server;

when the client CEP detects termination of the connection initiated by the first client;

a) retaining the connection to the first server and injecting synthetic transactions towards the first server;

b) receiving results of the synthetic transactions; and

c) storing the results or populating a store usable to regenerate the results at least in part;

when the client CEP detects that the first client opens a later connection, using the stored results or populated store in responding to later transactions, thereby improving the one or more operating characteristics; and

signaling between the client CEP and the server CEP to further improve the one or more operating characteristics.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the signaling comprises updates for a segment store usable to regenerate all or part of a transaction.