HETEROGENEOUS SERVICE PROVIDER MODEL THROUGH PAY-FOR-PERFORMANCE BASED TRANSIT SETTLEMENTS

• US 20110276446A1
• Filed: 05/04/2010
• Published: 11/10/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 05/04/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Aryaka Networks
• Original Assignee: Aryaka Networks
• Inventors: Gupta, Ajit, Nagaraj, Ashwath, Bharadhwaj, Rajeev
• Granted Patent: US 8,719,447 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/34
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/00 Commerce
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/018 Certifying business or products
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/04 Billing or invoicing

Abstract

A method and system of a heterogeneous service provider model through pay-for-performance based transit settlements are disclosed. In one embodiment, a system includes a plurality of Point of Presence (POP) locations between a head office and a branch office in a heterogeneous computer network configured to communicate data through a pay-per-performance peering relationship between different entities of the heterogeneous computer network. In this embodiment, the system implements a debit-credit mechanism configured to handle payments as well as penalties associated with violation of a pair-wise mutual agreement between independent for-profit entities providing network services in a segment of the heterogeneous computer network.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a head office;

a branch office associated with the head office;

a plurality of Point of Presence (POP) locations between the head office and the branch office in a heterogeneous computer network configured to communicate data through a pay-per-performance peering relationship between different entities of the heterogeneous computer network,

wherein the system implements a debit-credit mechanism configured to handle payments as well as penalties associated with violation of a pair-wise mutual agreement between independent for-profit entities providing network services in a segment of the heterogeneous computer network.

2. The system of claim 1:

wherein the independent for-profit entities include an application acceleration service provider, and

wherein the debit-credit mechanism monitors the segment being a portion of a communication link between different entities of the heterogeneous computer network, and

wherein at least one of an accelerating operation and a routing operation of data between segments is governed by a policy consistent with the pair-wise mutual agreement.

3. The system of claim 2:

wherein the set of Point of Presence (POP) locations are geographically proximate to the at least one head office and at least one branch office to perform an application acceleration function ‘

A’

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,

wherein the acceleration function ‘

A’

applies a bandwidth constraint and a latency constraint as factors of an acceleration service, thereby resulting in bandwidth savings and reduced latency between entities of the heterogeneous network; and

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 the application acceleration service provider.

4. The system of claim 3, further comprising an external network service as a licensed entity of the application acceleration service, wherein the external network service is contracted to at least one for-profit entity included in the pair-wise mutual agreement.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein

wherein a data associated with the application acceleration is re-routed during an intermediate POP failure through an alternate route associated with another POP location in the computer network,

wherein a service provider owns at least one of a link and an equipment to perform the application acceleration service, and

wherein the application acceleration is performed as a service without any Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) in the head office and the branch office.

6. The system of claim 1, 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.

7. The system of claim 1,

wherein a bandwidth and latency is measured across a sub-network in a segment of the heterogeneous computer network from a third-party provider included in the pair-wise mutual agreement, and

wherein a requisite network software and a requisite network hardware from another third-party provider included in one of the pair-wise mutual agreement and another pair-wise mutual agreement associated with the heterogeneous network is utilized.

8. The system of claim 1,

wherein an insertion model is configured to connect to the POP locations in the heterogeneous computer network based on any one of obtaining network connectivity from a customer premises, securing the network connection, and routing through the computer network.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the heterogeneous computer network may be part of at least one of:

an intercontinental heterogeneous network comprising a union of the computer network and another intercontinental computer network to provide unified network coverage;

a regional heterogeneous network comprising a union of the computer network and a regional computer network, the regional computer network being more localized than an intercontinental computer network;

an exchange heterogeneous network configured to provide increased acceleration at a reduced cost in the computer network through performing of an increased acceleration in a localized region including one of the head office and the branch office using a third-party equipment, the third-party being governed by the pair-wise mutual agreement;

a vendor heterogeneous network configured to provide increased acceleration in the computer network through utilization of additional acceleration capabilities of a third-party vendor equipment in conjunction with the existing acceleration capabilities in the heterogeneous computer network system, the third-party vendor being governed by another pair-wise mutual agreement; and

a service heterogeneous network configured to switch between external network service vendors based on proximity to at least one of the head office and the branch office, the external service vendors being governed by pair-wise mutual agreements.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein a mutual relationship between segments of the heterogeneous computer network system are established on a per flow basis to securely share resources, the flow signifying a packet flow from a source to a destination.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein segment data associated with a network service usage is collected on a packet flow from a source to a destination at least on one of a per day basis, a per week basis, a per month basis, a per link basis, and a per flow basis.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein a service abstraction and a Transport Control Protocol (TCP) optimization is implemented in the heterogeneous computer network system.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one of a remediation mechanism and a repudiation mechanism configured to handle a breach of a contract is specified.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the breach of the contract is determined to enable an initiation of the at least one of the remediation mechanism and the repudiation mechanism.

15. The system of claim 1, wherein a record associated with the network service usage is analyzed to generate an application acceleration service customer bill.

16. A method comprising:

configuring a plurality of Point of Presence (POP) locations between a head office and a branch office in a heterogeneous computer network;

communicating data through a pay-per-performance peering relationship between different entities of the heterogeneous computer network; and

implementing a debit-credit mechanism to handle payments as well as penalties associated with violation of a pair-wise mutual agreement between independent for-profit entities providing network services in a segment of the heterogeneous computer network.

17. The method of claim 16 further comprising:

wherein at least one of an accelerating operation and a routing operation of data between segments is governed by a policy consistent with the pair-wise mutual agreement, and

wherein the independent for-profit entities include an application acceleration service provider.

18. The method of claim 17:

wherein the set of Point of Presence (POP) locations are geographically proximate to the at least one head office and at least one branch office to perform an application acceleration function ‘

A’

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

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 the application acceleration service provider.

19. The method of claim 16 further comprising:

rerouting a data associated with the application acceleration during an intermediate POP failure through an alternate route associated with another POP location in the computer network,

wherein a service provider owns at least one of a link and an equipment to perform the application acceleration service, and

wherein the application acceleration is performed as a service without any Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) in the head office and the branch office.

20. The method of claim 16 in a form of a machine-readable medium embodying a set of instructions that, when executed by a machine, causes the machine to perform the method of claim 16.

21. A system, comprising:

a heterogeneous computer network configured to communicate data through a pay-per-performance peering relationship between different entities of the heterogeneous computer network; and

a debit-credit mechanism configured to handle payments as well as penalties associated with violation of a pair-wise mutual agreement between independent entities providing network services in a segment of the heterogeneous computer network.

22. The system of claim 21:

wherein the independent entities include an application acceleration service provider, and

wherein the debit-credit mechanism monitors the segment being a portion of a communication link between different entities of the heterogeneous computer network, and

wherein at least one of an accelerating operation and a routing operation of data between segments is governed by a policy consistent with the pair-wise mutual agreement.

23. The system of claim 22:

wherein the set of Point of Presence (POP) locations are geographically proximate to the at least one head office and at least one branch office to perform an application acceleration function ‘

A’

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

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 the application acceleration service provider.