Reliable, high-throughput, high-performance transport and routing mechanism for arbitrary data flows

• US 20120215938A1
• Filed: 04/30/2012
• Published: 08/23/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/30/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Akamai Technologies, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Akamai Technologies, Inc.
• Inventors: Fletcher, Gregory, Champagne, Andrew F., Stodolsky, Daniel, Afergan, Michael M.
• Granted Patent: US 8,891,522 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/238
• CPC Class Codes: H04J 3/1617 carrying packets or ATM cells
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4633 Interconnection of networks using encapsulation techniques, e.g. tunneling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/668 Internet protocol [IP] address subnets
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5009 Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5077 wherein the managed service relates to simple transport services, i.e. providing only network infrastructure
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5096 wherein the managed service relates to distributed or central networked applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/00 Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0829 Packet loss
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0852 Delays
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/16 Threshold monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/2567 for reachability, e.g. inquiring the address of a correspondent behind a NAT server
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/4511 using domain name system [DNS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/5007 Internet protocol [IP] addresses
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/01 Protocols
• 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

Abstract

The present invention leverages an existing content delivery network infrastructure to provide a system that enhances performance for any application that uses the Internet Protocol (IP) as its underlying transport mechanism. An overlay network comprises a set of edge nodes, intermediate nodes, and gateway nodes. This network provides optimized routing of IP packets. Internet application users can use the overlay to obtain improved performance during normal network conditions, to obtain or maintain good performance where normal default BGP routing would otherwise force the user over congested or poorly performing paths, or to enable the user to maintain communications to a target server application even during network outages.

Claims

1. An overlay network that provides a plurality of client machines remote access to an application executing on a target server, wherein each client machine communicates with the application over the Internet using Internet Protocol (IP) transport, comprising:

a domain name service that is authoritative for a hostname associated with the application;

a first server, a set of second servers, and a third server, wherein each server in the overlay network receives and processes communications over IP, the first server having a virtual IP address determined by resolution of the hostname associated with the application;

wherein, for each IP-based request data packet to be communicated between a client machine and the application executing on the target server, the first server encapsulates the request data packet, duplicates the request data packet as encapsulated, and forwards the request data packet as encapsulated to the third server, the request data packet being forwarded to the third server over each of a set of paths that include at least one second server, the set of paths including at least first and second paths from the first server to the third server that do not share a same second server, the first server subsequently receiving a response to the request data packet at the virtual IP address; and

wherein the third server processes received data to recover the request data packet, applies a network address translation to the request data packet as recovered, and forwards the request data packet to the target server for further processing by the application, wherein the network address translation also applies a source NAT to the packet before it is forwarded to the target server.

2. The overlay network as described in claim 1 wherein the third server receives the response from the target server as a response data packet, encapsulates the response data packet, duplicates the response data packet as encapsulated, and forwards the response data packet as encapsulated over a set of paths.

3. The overlay network method as described in claim 2 wherein the first server processes received data to recover the response data packet, and forwards the response data packet to the client machine.

4. An overlay network that provides a plurality of client machines remote access to an application executing on a target server, wherein each client machine communicates with the application over the Internet using Internet Protocol (IP) transport, comprising:

a domain name service that is authoritative for a hostname associated with the application;

a set of servers, wherein each server in the overlay network receives and processes communications over IP, the set of servers including at least a first server having a virtual IP address determined by resolution of the hostname associated with the application; and

a controller executing business logic to determine whether an IP-based request data packet is communicated between a client machine and the application executing on the target server using the servers of the overlay network.

5. The overlay network as described in claim 4 wherein the hostname is obtained by aliasing a domain associated with the application.

6. The overlay network as described in claim 4 wherein the first server is associated with a given edge region that is a best performing edge region in the overlay network at a time of the resolution of the hostname.

7. The overlay network as described in claim 4 further including an extranet to receive data defining the business logic.

8. The overlay network as described in claim 4 wherein the application executes in association with a virtual private network (VPN).

9. The overlay network as described in claim 4 wherein the application facilitates a Web transaction over a SSL connection associated with a path through the overlay network using the set of servers.

10. The overlay network as described in claim 4 wherein the application facilitates a SOAP-based Web transaction associated with a path through the overlay network using the set of servers.