System, method and computer program product for monitoring and controlling network connections from a supervisory operating system

• US 20090204709A1
• Filed: 02/20/2009
• Published: 08/13/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 08/23/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intellectual Ventures II LLC (Intellectual Ventures LLC)
• Original Assignee: Finite State Machine Labs Inc.
• Inventors: Yodaiken, Victor J.
• Granted Patent: US 8,713,158 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45537 Provision of facilities of other operating environments, e.g. WINE I/O emulation G06F13/105
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0663 Performing the actions predefined by failover planning, e.g. switching to standby network elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5019 Ensuring fulfilment of SLA
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/00 Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/10 Active monitoring, e.g. heartbeat, ping or trace-route
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/16 Threshold monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/1441 Countermeasures against malicious traffic countermeasures against attacks on cryptographic mechanisms H04L9/002
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/1458 Denial of Service
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/12 Protocol engines
• 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

A system, method and computer program product that is designed to support high-availability, rapid fault recovery, out of band condition signaling and/or other quality of service assurances and security in a networked environment. In one aspect, a method of the invention includes the step of providing a processing system with a dual-kernel or multi-kernel software operating system. The operating system includes a supervisory operating system and a secondary operating system that provides network functions to user applications. The method also includes the step of providing a Network Control Software (NCS) in the supervisory operating system. The NCS is configured to transparently monitor and control network operations in the secondary operating system.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

configuring a processing device to include a supervisory operating system and a secondary operating system, wherein the secondary operating system provides network services to network clients; and

providing network control software that executes as an application of the supervisory operating system, wherein the network control software is configured to monitor and/or control network operations in the secondary operating system.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the network control software is interposed between network device drivers and network clients of the secondary operating system.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the network control software is configured to provide high speed fail-over.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the network control software is configured to protect against network-based attacks.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the secondary operating system comprises a network protocol stack that is used by a network client to transmit data over a network connected to the processing device.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the network control software is configured to transparently add functionality to enhance existing network protocol stacks and applications of the secondary operating system.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the supervisory operating system is operable to preempt the secondary operating system.

8. A processing system, comprising:

a supervisory operating system;

a secondary operating system configured to provide network services to network clients; and

network control software that executes as an application of the supervisory operating system, wherein the network control software is configured to monitor and/or control network operations in the secondary operating system.

9. The processing system of claim 8, wherein the secondary operating system comprises a virtual network driver that emulates a network device driver.

10. A processing system, comprising:

a supervisory operating system;

a secondary operating system that provides network services to network clients;

network control software that executes as an application of the supervisory operating system; and

a control database, wherein the control database enables the network control software to define arbitrary logical connections, wherein the network control software is configured to monitor and/or control network operations in the secondary operating system.

11. The processing system of claim 10, wherein the control database stores information that enables the network control software to determine whether a given processing device is a member of a fail over group.

12. The processing system of claim 10, wherein the control database stores information that enables the network control software to determine whether a given TCP port has been designated as being a critical port.

13. The processing system of claim 10, wherein the network control software comprises an event handler that is invoked when a data packet is received from a network.

14. The processing system of claim 10, wherein the network control software comprises one or more threads.

15. The processing system of claim 10, wherein the secondary operating system is executed as an application of the supervisory operating system.

16. A processing system, comprising:

a supervisory operating system;

a secondary operating system, wherein the secondary operating system is executed as an application of the supervisory operating system; and

network control means for monitoring and/or controlling network operations in the secondary operating system, wherein the network control means executes as an application of the supervisory operating system.

17. The processing system of claim 16, wherein the secondary operating system comprises a virtual network driver that emulates a network driver.

18. The processing system of claim 17, further comprising a network device driver, wherein the network control means is interposed functionally between the network device driver and the virtual network driver such that the network control means passes data packets between the virtual network driver and the network device driver.

19. The processing system of claim 18, wherein the network control means is for determining whether a packet received by the network device driver is addressed to a critical port.