SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISTRIBUTED DATA COLLECTION AND HEURISTIC REFINEMENT IN A NETWORK INTERMEDIARY DEVICE

• US 20120198050A1
• Filed: 01/30/2011
• Published: 08/02/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 01/30/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CA, Inc. (d/b/a CA Technologies) (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Blue Coat Systems Incorporated (Gen Digital Inc.)
• Inventors: Maki, Eric, Porter, Kevin, Lizon, Marcin Lukasz
• Granted Patent: US 9,154,387 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/04 Processing captured monitoring data, e.g. for logfile generation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/045 for graphical visualisation of monitoring data

Abstract

Data useful in analyzing the effectiveness of policies for handling transactions involving client communications is automatically collected at network intermediary devices and delivered to an analysis server as part of feedback communications from the network intermediary devices. The data may be collected according to data collection directives distributed to the network intermediary devices along with updates to policies for handling transactions, those updates being configured to alter actions of the network intermediary devices, for example to accommodate changes in behaviors of content servers from which the network intermediary devices obtain content in connection with the client communications.

Claims

1. A method, comprising automatically collecting, at network intermediary devices, data useful in analyzing effectiveness of policies for handling transactions involving client communications instantiated at the network intermediary devices, and delivering said data from the network intermediary devices to an analysis server as communications from the network intermediary devices.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the communications are included in health monitoring communications from the intermediary devices.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the data is collected according to data collection directives distributed to the network intermediary devices along with updates to the policies for handling transactions.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the updates are configured to alter actions of the network intermediary devices to accommodate changes in behaviors of content servers from which the network intermediary devices obtain content in connection with the client communications.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein a delivery schedule for said data is periodic per network intermediary device, and randomized across the network intermediary devices.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising developing future information-gathering directives to be delivered to the network intermediary devices as part of an update to a policy for handling the transactions, said developing being based at least in part on the collected data.

7. A method, comprising including, in a policy update, information-gathering directives for network intermediary devices at which the policy update is to be instantiated, delivering the information gathering directives with the policy update to the network intermediary devices, collecting, at the network intermediary devices, data according to the information-gathering directives, and returning, from the network intermediary devices, the data collected according to the information gathering directives, said data being returned as part of feedback communications from the network intermediary devices.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the data collected according to the information-gathering directives includes attributes of client requests received by the network intermediary devices.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein the data collected according to the information-gathering directives includes results of processing by the network intermediary devices.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein the data collected according to the information-gathering directives includes some or all of indications of whether objects were found in caches maintained at the network intermediary devices, mechanisms by which objects were found in the caches, and whether the objects so found were modified, revalidated, or replaced.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein the data collected according to the information-gathering directives includes some or all of individual metrics, or aggregated metrics.

12. The method of claim 7, wherein the data collected according to the information-gathering directives includes some or all of:

counts or accumulated values for a single quantity, counts or accumulated values broken down by a key generated from an aspect of traffic observed by the network intermediary devices, histograms of accumulated values which break down a single quantity by distribution, and/or keyed value tables which quantify consistency of discrete behaviors, indicate whether a behavior exhibits consistently or not, or if a behavior is non-uniform.

13. The method of claim 7, wherein the data collected according to the information-gathering directives includes information useful for identifying web sites or other content sources that may respond well to an existing or in-service caching policy.

14. The method of claim 7, wherein the data collected according to the information-gathering directives includes information useful for identifying sites that should not be subjected to site-specific caching polices.

15. The method of claim 7, wherein the data collected according to the information-gathering directives includes information to help identify which network intermediary devices are or are not using previously published controls, rules, heuristics, or policies.

16. A system, comprising a policy analysis server communicatively coupled to a plurality of network intermediary devices, the policy analysis server coupled to receive, from the network intermediary devices, data useful in analyzing effectiveness of policies for handling transactions involving client communications instantiated at the network intermediary devices, said data being received from the network intermediary devices as part of feedback communications from the network intermediary devices.

17. The system of claim 16 further including a policy distribution server communicatively coupled to the plurality of network intermediary devices and configured to deliver to the network intermediary devices a policy update that includes information-gathering directives for the network intermediary devices, said information-gathering directives updating data collection operations of the network intermediary devices.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the policy update further includes caching polices for the network intermediary devices specifying site-specific behaviors for one or more web servers communicatively coupled to the network intermediary devices.

19. The system of claim 17, wherein the network intermediary devices are configured to contact the policy distribution server periodically per network intermediary device to receive the policy update.

20. A method of monitoring network intermediary devices, comprising:

establishing, between one or more network intermediary devices and an update server, a subscription/feedback channel through which instrumentation is applied to the one or more network intermediary devices for reporting, via the feedback channel and on a schedule determined by the instrumentation, information of interest, said information comprising some or all of;

information useful in determining usage patterns in a content delivery network, information useful to determine which product features of the network intermediary devices are actually enabled in the various network intermediary devices and with what settings, effects and impacts, and information useful for understanding and evaluating server farm characteristics.