METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR DATA COMMUNICATIONS IN CLOUD COMPUTING ARCHITECTURE

• US 20110208837A1
• Filed: 02/22/2011
• Published: 08/25/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 02/22/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NComputing Global, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Ncomputing Incorporated (ZeroDesktop, Inc.)
• Inventors: Sartori, Gabriele
• Granted Patent: US 8,601,097 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/219
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/028 by filtering
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/60 Software-defined switches

Abstract

Example embodiments of the present disclosure concern a system and method for selectively intercepting communications in a cloud computing environment by receiving communications from one or more thin-client terminal systems connected via a local area network, determining one or more recipients of each received communication, and based on a determination that the one or more recipients of a communication include only thin-client terminal systems connected via the local area network, intercepting the communication and preventing the communication from being transmitted to a central server connected to the local area network via a wide area network, storing the communication, and forwarding the communication to the one or more recipients connected to the local area network.

Claims

1. A data distribution device to selectively intercept communications in a cloud computing architecture, the data distribution device comprising:

an interceptor module configured to selectively intercept data streams transmitted by at least one thin-client terminal system communicatively connected to the data distribution device via a local area network, the data distribution device also communicatively connected to a central server via a wide area network;

an analyzer module configured to analyze the data streams to identify characteristics of the data streams, the characteristics including at least one destination of the data streams,

the interceptor module selectively intercepting a data stream that does not have the central server as a destination of the data stream and preventing the data stream from being transmitted to the central server;

a buffer configured to store the selectively intercepted data stream; and

a forwarding module configured to inject the selectively intercepted data stream in a communication from the central server to a thin-client terminal system identified as a destination in the selectively intercepted data stream.

2. The data distribution device of claim 1, wherein the forwarding module is further configured to:

for the data streams having the central server as a destination and a bandwidth intensity above a predetermined threshold, transcode the data streams from a first encoding format to a second encoding scheme, the second encoding format being smaller than the first encoding format; and

transmit the transcoded data stream to the central server.

3. The data distribution device of claim 1, wherein the data streams are multimedia data streams generated by a videoconferencing application.

4. The data distribution device of claim 1, further comprising a transcoding module configured to transcode the selectively intercepted data stream from a first encoding format to a second encoding format, the second encoding format being smaller than the first encoding format.

5. The data distribution device of claim 1, wherein the forwarding module is further configured to transmit an empty tagged data stream to the central server in place of the selectively intercepted data stream.

6. The data distribution device of claim 1, wherein the interceptor module is configured to prevent the selectively intercepted data stream from being transmitted to the central server by removing an uplink stream in the selectively intercepted data stream.

7. The data distribution device of claim 1, wherein the interceptor module receives an instruction from the central server to selectively intercept the data stream.

8. The data distribution device of claim 1, wherein the analyzer module is configured to analyze the data streams by further determining a setting of a flag in the data streams, wherein the interceptor module selectively intercepts certain ones of the data streams having the flag set.

9. The data distribution device of claim 1, wherein the forwarding module is further configured to broadcast the selectively intercepted data stream to a subset of the at least one thin-client terminal system identified as the destination of the selectively intercepted data stream.

10. A method of selectively intercepting communications in a cloud computing environment, the method comprising:

receiving communications from at least one thin-client terminal system connected via a local area network;

determining at least one recipient of each communication; and

based on a determination that the at least one recipient of a communication includes only thin-client terminal systems connected via the local area network;

intercepting the communication and preventing the communication from being transmitted to a central server connected to the local area network via a wide area network;

storing the communication; and

forwarding the stored communication to the at least one recipient connected to the local area network.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

based on a determination that the at least one recipient of the communication includes a device remote to the local area network,

forwarding the communication to recipients connected to the local area network;

reducing a size of the communication by transcoding the communication from a first encoding format to a second encoding format; and

transmitting the transcoded communication to the central server via the wide area network.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

substituting the intercepted communication with an empty tagged communication; and

transmitting the empty tagged communication to the central server.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein the communication is a multimedia data stream generated by a videoconferencing application.

14. The method of claim 10, further comprising receiving an instruction from the central server to selectively intercept the communication received from the at least one thin-client terminal system.

15. The method of claim 10, further comprising analyzing the each communication to identify a setting of a flag, wherein the each communication having the flag set is intercepted.

16. The method of claim 10, wherein forwarding the stored communication to the at least one recipient connected to the local area network comprises injecting the communication into a data stream transmitted from the central server to the at least one recipient.

17. The method of claim 10, wherein forwarding the stored communication to the at least one recipient connected to the local area network comprises broadcasting the communication to the at least one recipient connected to the local area network.

18. A system for selectively intercepting communications in a cloud computing environment, the system comprising:

a plurality of thin-client terminal systems interconnected via a local area network;

a central server configured to receive input data from the plurality of thin-client terminal systems and to transmit output data to the plurality of thin-client terminal systems; and

a data distribution device connected to the plurality of thin-client terminal systems via the local area network and the central server via a wide area network, the data distribution device configured to;

receive communications transmitted by the plurality of thin-client terminal systems;

determine at least one recipient of each communication; and

based on a determination that the at least one recipient of a communication includes only at least one of thin-client terminal systems connected via the local area network;

intercept the communication and prevent the communication from being transmitted to the central server;

store the communication; and

forward the stored communication to the at least one recipient connected to the local area network.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the data distribution device is further configured to:

based on a determination that the at least one recipient of the communication includes a device remote to the local area network,

forward the communication to recipients connected to the local area network;

reduce a size of the communication by transcoding the communication from a first encoding format to a second encoding format; and

transmit the transcoded communication to the central server.

20. The system of claim 18, wherein the data distribution device is further configured to:

substitute the intercepted communication with an empty tagged communication; and

transmit the empty tagged communication to the central server.

21. The system of claim 18, wherein the communication is a multimedia data stream generated by a videoconferencing application.

22. The system of claim 18, wherein the central server is further configured to transmit an instruction to the data distribution device, and wherein the data distribution device is configured to intercept the communication identified by the instruction.

23. The system of claim 18, wherein the data distribution device is further configured to analyze the each communication to identify a setting of a flag, wherein the each communication having the flag set is intercepted.

24. The system of claim 18, wherein the data distribution device is configured to forward the stored communication to the at least one recipient connected to the local area network by injecting the communication into a data stream transmitted from the central server to the at least one recipient.

25. The system of claim 18, wherein the data distribution device is configured to forward the stored communication to the at least one recipient connected to the local area network by broadcasting the communication to the at least one recipient connected to the local area network.