APPLICATION ACCELERATION AS A SERVICE SYSTEM AND METHOD

• US 20110016180A1
• Filed: 08/31/2009
• Published: 01/20/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 07/17/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Aryaka Networks
• Original Assignee: Aryaka Networks
• Inventors: NAGARAJ, ASHWATH, BHARADHWAJ, RAJEEV, GUPTA, AJIT
• Granted Patent: US 8,489,685 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/205
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4633 Interconnection of networks using encapsulation techniques, e.g. tunneling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0227 Filtering policies mail message filtering H04L51/212
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0236 Filtering by address, protocol, port number or service, e.g. IP-address or URL
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0272 Virtual private networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0281 Proxies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/029 Firewall traversal, e.g. tunnelling or, creating pinholes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/63 Routing a service request depending on the request content or context
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/04 Protocols for data compression, e.g. ROHC

Abstract

Disclosed are systems and methods to provide application acceleration as a service. In one embodiment, a system includes a head office to serve an enterprise application comprised of a collaborative document. The system also includes a branch office to request the collaborative document from the head office. The enterprise application may also include a computed document and/or a static document. In addition, the system also includes a set of Point of Presence (POP) locations between the head office and the branch office to communicate the collaborative document, the computed document and the static document on behalf of the head office from a closest POP location to the head office to a closest POP location to the branch office and then onward to the branch office.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a head office to serve an enterprise application comprised of a collaborative document;

a branch office to request the collaborative document from the head office; and

a set of Point of Presence (POP) locations between the head office and the branch office to communicate the collaborative document on behalf of the head office from a closest POP location to the head office to a closest POP location to the branch office and then onward to the branch office.

2. The system of claim 1,

wherein the collaborative document is accessed and simultaneously modified by a number of different users at the branch office on a frequent basis,

wherein the enterprise application further comprises a computed document generated at runtime and a static document prepared a-priori, and

wherein the set of POP locations between the head office and the branch office also communicate the computed document and the static document on behalf of the head office from the closest POP location to the head office to the closest POP location to the branch office and then onward to the branch office.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the enterprise application is an internal application of a business entity, wherein the head office of the business entity and the branch office of the business entity securely access the enterprise application through a private network using at least one of public addresses of source and destination routers, pools of addresses represented by a firewall, using a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) label, and using a Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) tag, and wherein the enterprise application is optionally executed at any of the set of POP locations.

4. The system of claim 3 further comprising:

an optional Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) device, an optional branch router and an optional head-office router, coupled with at least one of the head office and the branch office;

to perform an Advanced Redundancy Removal (ARR) function to avoid sending previously sent patterns in at least one of a transport stream and a packet stream,

to perform TCP proxies, with varying policies for at least one of TCP windows, buffering and security,

to optionally perform protocol dependent split proxies on at least one of the transport stream and the packet stream,

to generate a secure transport data sent over secure tunnels of at least one of the collaborative document, the computed document, and the static document, and

to communicate the secured transport data between a client device in the branch office and the head office, with optional intervening firewalls, through at least one of an Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) tunnel, a Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnel, VLAN, and MPLS labels using IP headers.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the optional CPE device:

to resolve a first bandwidth limitation in a first link between the closest POP location to the branch office and the branch office and to reduce communication time of at least one of the collaborative document, the computed document, and the static document in the link between the closest POP location to the branch office and the branch office, and

to resolve a second bandwidth limitation in a second link between the closest POP location to the head office and the head office and to reduce communication time of at least one of the collaborative document, the computed document, and the static document in the link between the closest POP location to the head office and the head office.

6. The system of claim 5, further comprising:

an optional storage of at least one of the set of POP locations and the optional CPE device to reduce an amount of data flow when the ARR function is performed, and

wherein the optional storage is at least one of a flash device, a solid state device and a hard drive.

7. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a public server to generate a computed document and a static document,

wherein the branch office to request at least one of the computed document and the static document from the head office through at least one of the transport stream and the packet stream, and

wherein the set of POP locations to route at least one of a transport stream and a packet stream on behalf of the public server from a closest POP location to the public server to the closest POP location to the branch office to the branch office.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein there are at least one of multiple ones of the head office, multiple ones of the public server, and multiple ones of the branch office.

9. The system of claim 7:

wherein the head office and the branch office communicate with each other through at least one of a private network and a public network, and

wherein the public server and the branch office communicate with each other through at least one of the public network and the private network.

10. The system of claim 9:

wherein the computed document is generated based on a recent interaction between the public server and the branch office during a secure session of the public network.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the set of POP locations are shared by a plurality of licensed entities of an application acceleration service, wherein each of the licensed entities have at least one head office and at least one branch office, and wherein each of the licensed entities leverage both a shared software and a shared hardware infrastructure of an application acceleration service provider.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein an alternate path is used to route at least one of a transport stream and a packet stream that comprises at least one of the collaborative document, the computed document, and the static document between the head office and the branch office when routing through the closest POP location to the branch office is undesirable due to at least one of a network congestion, a service unavailability, and a segment policy.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein an external service is accessed by the branch office without communicating through the head office when a request to access the external service is communicated from the branch office directly to a particular POP location closest to the external service.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein a compression between each of the set of POP locations is variable based on a path segment policy between each of the set of POP locations, the CPE, and the head office.

15. A system comprising:

a business entity that has at least one head office and at least one branch office;

a set of Point of Presence (POP) locations that are geographically proximate to the at least one head office and the at least one branch office to perform an application acceleration function for a plurality of business entities through a placement of at least one of a collaborative document, a computed document, and a static document of an enterprise application at a closest POP location to a requesting entity; and

an optional Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) device at either one of the head office and the requesting entity to perform an Advanced Redundancy Removal (ARR) function on at least one of the collaborative document, the enterprise application, and the computed document, to perform TCP proxies, with varying policies for at least one of TCP windows, buffering and security, and to optionally perform protocol dependent split proxies on at least one of a transport stream and a packet stream.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the requesting entity is at least one of the branch office of the business entity, a secondary head office to a particular head office of the business entity in which at least one of the collaborative document, the computed document, and the static document is hosted, and a consumer client-side device.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the application acceleration function is offered as a service to the business entity.

18. The system of claim 15:

wherein the collaborative document is accessed and simultaneously modified by a number of different users at the at least one branch office of the business entity on a frequent basis, and

wherein the computed document is generated based on a recent interaction between a public server and the branch office during a secure session of a public network.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the enterprise application is an internal application of the business entity, wherein the at least one head office of the business entity and the at least one branch office of the business entity securely access the enterprise application through a private network using at least one of public addresses of source and destination routers, pools of addresses represented by a firewall, using a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) label, and using a Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) tag, and wherein the enterprise application is optionally executed at any of the set of POP locations.

20. The system of claim 15, wherein the CPE device to generate a secure transport data sent over secure channels of at least one of the collaborative document, the computed document, and the static document and to communicate the secured transport data between the requesting entity and the at least one head office of the business entity, with optional intervening firewalls, through at least one of an Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) tunnel, a Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnel, VLANs, and MPLS labels using IP headers.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the optional CPE device:

to resolve a first bandwidth limitation in a first link between the closest POP location to the branch office and the branch office and to reduce communication time of at least one of the collaborative document, the computed document, and the static document in the link between the closest POP location to the branch office and the branch office, and

to resolve a second bandwidth limitation in a second link between the closest POP location to the head office and the head office and to reduce communication time of at least one of the collaborative document, the computed document, and the static document in the link between the closest POP location to the head office and the head office.

22. The system of claim 21, further comprising:

an optional storage of at least one of the set of POP locations and the optional CPE device to reduce an amount of data flow when the ARR function is performed, and

wherein the optional storage is at least one of a flash device, a solid state device and a hard drive.

23. The system of claim 15, further comprising:

a public server to generate the computed document and the static document; and

a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to optionally host the static document,

wherein the requesting entity to request at least one of the computed document and the static document from the at least one head office through at least one of the transport stream and the packet stream, and

wherein the set of POP locations to route the at least one of the transport stream and the packet stream on behalf of at least one of the public server and the CDN from the closest POP location to the requesting entity to the requesting entity.

24. The system of claim 23:

wherein the at least one head office and the at least one branch office communicate with each other through at least one of a private network and a public network, and

wherein the public server and the at least one branch office communicate with each other through at least one of the public network and the private network.

25. The system of claim 15, wherein an alternate path is used to route at least one of the transport stream and the packet stream that comprises at least one of the collaborative document, the computed document, and the static document between the at least one head office and the requesting entity when routing through the closest POP location to the requesting entity is undesirable due to at least one of a network congestion, a service unavailability, and a segment policy.

26. The system of claim 15, wherein an external service is accessed by the requesting entity without communicating through the at least one head office when a request to access the external service is communicated from the requesting entity directly to a particular POP location closest to the external service.

27. The system of claim 15, wherein a compression for each of communication segments between the head office and the branch office is variable, based on a path segment policy for each of the communication segments between the head office and the branch office.

28. A method comprising:

serving an enterprise application comprised of a collaborative document from a head office of a business entity to a branch office;

processing a request from the branch office for the collaborative document using a processor;

communicating the collaborative document through at least one of a transport stream and a packet stream on behalf of the head office from a closest Point of Presence (POP) location to the head office to a closest POP location to the branch office and then onward to the branch office,

thereby eliminating a requirement to purchase and maintain expensive hardware and software devices at the head office and the branch office to compress and decompress data, and

thereby eliminating a need for the head office to subscribe to a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network; and

accelerating the collaborative document from the head office to the branch office.

29. The method of claim 28, further comprising:

granting simultaneous access to the collaborative document to different client devices of the branch office; and

processing a simultaneously modification of the collaborative document by the different client devices on a frequent basis from a closest POP location to the branch office to a closest POP location to the head office.

30. The method of claim 29, wherein the enterprise application is an internal application of the business entity, wherein the head office of the business entity and the branch office of the business entity securely access the enterprise application through a private network using at least one of public addresses of source and destination routers, pools of addresses represented by a firewall, using a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) label, and using a Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) tag, and wherein the enterprise application is optionally executed at any of the set of POP locations.

31. The method of claim 28, further comprising:

performing an Advanced Redundancy Removal (ARR) function to avoid sending previously sent patterns of at least one of a transport stream and a packet stream,

performing TCP proxies, with varying policies for at least one of TCP windows, buffering and security,

generating a secure transport data sent over secure tunnels of the collaborative document, and

communicating the secured transport data between a client device in the branch office and the head office, with optional intervening firewalls, through at least one of an Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) tunnel, a Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnel, VLANs, and MPLS labels using IP headers.

32. The method of claim 31, further comprising:

resolving a first bandwidth limitation in a first link between the closest POP location to the branch office and the branch office and to reduce communication time of the collaborative document in the link between the closest POP location to the branch office and the branch office; and

resolving a second bandwidth limitation in a second link between the closest POP location to the head office and the head office and to reduce communication time of the collaborative document in the link between the closest POP location to the head office and the head office.

33. The method of claim 32, further comprising:

reducing an amount of data flow when the ARR function is performed through an optional storage comprising at least one of a flash device, a solid state device, and a hard drive.

34. The method of claim 28, further comprising:

generating a computed document and a static document through a public server; and

routing at least one of the transport stream and the packet stream on behalf of the public server from the closest POP location to the branch office to the branch office.

35. The method of claim 34, wherein there are at least one of multiple ones of the head office, multiple ones of the public server, and multiple ones of the branch office.

36. The method of claim 34:

wherein the head office and the branch office communicate with each other through at least one of a private network and a public network, and

wherein the public server and the branch office communicate with each other through at least one of the public network and the private network.

37. The method of claim 36, further comprising

generating the computed document based on a recent interaction between the public server and the branch office during a secure session of the public network.

38. The method of claim 28, further comprising sharing a set of POP locations between the head office and the branch office with a plurality of licensed entities of an application acceleration service, wherein each of the licensed entities have at least one head office and at least one branch office.

39. The method of claim 28, further comprising routing at least one of the transport stream and the packet stream comprising at least one of the collaborative document, computed document and the static document through an alternate path between the head office and the branch office when routing through the closest POP location to the branch office is undesirable due to at least one of a network congestion, a service unavailability, and a segment policy.

40. The method of claim 28, further comprising accessing an external service from the branch office without communicating through the head office when a request to access the external service is communicated from the branch office directly to a particular POP location closest to the external service.

41. The method of claim 28, further comprising performing variable compression for each of a communication segment between the head office and the branch office based on path segment policies for each of the communication segments between the head office and the branch office.

42. A method comprising:

providing an application acceleration service to a business entity having at least one head office and at least one branch office;

placing a set of Point of Presence (POP) locations in a geographically proximate manner to the at least one head office and the at least one branch office;

performing an application acceleration function for a plurality of business entities through a placement of at least one of a collaborative document, a computed document, and a static document at a closest POP location to a requesting entity using a processor;

performing an Advanced Redundancy Removal (ARR) function on at least one of the collaborative document, the computed document, and the static document using the processor, and to optionally perform protocol dependent split proxies on at least one of a transport stream and a packet stream; and

performing TCP proxies, with varying policies for at least one of TCP windows, buffering and security.

43. The method of claim 42, wherein the requesting entity is at least one of the branch office of the business entity, a secondary head office to a particular head office of the business entity in which at least one of the collaborative document, the computed document, and the static document is hosted, and a consumer client side device.

44. The method of claim 42, wherein the application acceleration function is offered as a service to the business entity.

45. The method of claim 42:

wherein the collaborative document is accessed and simultaneously modified by a number of different users at the at least one branch office of the business entity on a frequent basis, and

wherein the computed document is generated based on a recent interaction between a public server and the branch office during a secure session of a public network.

46. The method of claim 45, wherein the enterprise application is an internal application of the business entity, wherein the at least one head office of the business entity and the at least one branch office of the business entity securely access the enterprise application through a private network using at least one of public addresses of source and destination routers, pools of addresses represented by a firewall, using a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) label, and using a Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) tag, and wherein the enterprise application is optionally executed at any of the set of POP locations.

47. The method of claim 42, wherein an optional Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) device to generate a secure transport data sent over secure channels of at least one of the collaborative document, the computed document, and the static document and to communicate the secured transport data between the requesting entity and the at least one head office of the business entity, with optional intervening firewalls, through at least one of an Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) tunnel, a Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnel, VLANs, and MPLS labels using IP headers.

48. The method of claim 47, wherein the optional CPE device:

to resolve a first bandwidth limitation in a first link between the closest POP location to the branch office and the branch office and to reduce communication time of at least one of the collaborative document, the computed document, and the static document in the link between the closest POP location to the branch office and the branch office, and

to resolve a second bandwidth limitation in a second link between the closest POP location to the head office and the head office and to reduce communication time of at least one of the collaborative document, the computed document, and the static document in the link between the closest POP location to the head office and the head office.

49. The method of claim 48:

wherein an optional storage of at least one of the set of POP locations and the optional CPE device is used to reduce an amount of data flow when the ARR function is performed, and

wherein the optional storage is at least one of a flash device, a solid state device, and a hard drive.

50. The method of claim 42, further comprising:

generating the computed document and a static document through a public server,

wherein the requesting entity to request at least one of the computed document and the static document from the at least one head office through at least one of the transport stream and the packet stream, and

wherein the set of POP locations to route at least one of the transport stream and the packet stream on behalf of the public server from the closest POP location to the requesting entity to the requesting entity.

51. The method of claim 50:

wherein the at least one head office and the at least one branch office communicate with each other through at least one of a private network and a public network, and

wherein the public server and the at least one branch office communicate with each other through at least one of the public network and the private network.

52. The method of claim 42 wherein an alternate path is used to route at least one of the transport stream and the packet stream that comprises at least one of the collaborative document, the computed document, and the static document between the at least one head office and the requesting entity when routing through the closest POP location to the requesting entity is undesirable due to at least one of a network congestion, a service unavailability, and a segment policy.

53. The method of claim 42 wherein an external service is accessed by the requesting entity without communicating through the at least one head office when a request to access the external service is communicated from the requesting entity directly to a particular POP location closest to the external service.

54. The method of claim 42 wherein a compression for each of the communication segments between the head office and the branch office is variable, based on a path segment policy for each of the communication segments between the head office and the branch office.