ADDRESS MANIPULATION FOR NETWORK TRANSPARENCY AND TROUBLESHOOTING

• US 20070283024A1
• Filed: 03/07/2007
• Published: 12/06/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 03/08/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Riverbed Technology, LLC (Riverbed Technology Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Riverbed Technology Incorporated
• Inventors: Landrum, Alfred, Ly, Kand, McCanne, Steve
• Granted Patent: US 8,447,802 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/228
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/2528 Translation at a proxy
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/2532 Clique of NAT servers
• 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 69/16 Implementation or adaptation of Internet protocol [IP], of transmission control protocol [TCP] or of user datagram protocol [UDP]

Abstract

In address-manipulation enabled transaction accelerators, the transaction accelerators include outer-connection addressing information in packets emitted over an inner connection between transaction accelerators and inner-connection addressing information is added in packets sent over the inner connection. The inner-connection addressing information can be carried in TCP option fields, directly in other fields, or indirectly through data structures maintained by the endpoints processing the connection. Address information can be encoded into header fields originally intended for other purposes but that are unused or encoded into used fields, overlaid in combination with other data that is being carried in those used fields. The existence of inner-connection addressing information in a packet can be signaled by a flag in the packet, by a bit or other designated encoding. The flag can be in an unused header field or overlaid. Where replacement and option addition is needed, swappers and unswappers might be used.

Claims

1. A method of transferring information across a network, the method comprising:

recording actual addressing information in a message header;

substituting apparent addressing information for actual addressing information;

transmitting the message using the apparent addressing information;

receiving the message by a network proxy;

detecting the previously-recorded actual addressing information;

determining if the received message is to be processed by the network proxy; and

in response to the determination that the received message is to be processed by the network proxy, substituting actual addressing information for apparent addressing information and processing the message as though it had been received with the actual addressing information.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein recording comprises adding a TCP option that includes source address, source port, destination address, and destination port.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein detecting comprises detecting a TCP option including addressing information.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein determining comprises comparing a detected destination address to a plurality of acceptable destination addresses.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein recording comprises adding an IP option that includes source address and destination address.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein detecting comprises detecting an IP option including addressing information.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

in response to the determination that the received message is not to be processed by the network proxy, forwarding the message using the apparent addressing information.