Method and apparatus for a client connection manager

• US 9,565,256 B1
• Filed: 10/31/2007
• Issued: 02/07/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 08/15/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Digi International Inc.
• Original Assignee: Digi International Inc.
• Inventors: Allred, Curtis M., Schwartz, Elliot
• Primary Examiner(s): Strange, Aaron
• Application Number:
  US11/981,077
• Time in Patent Office: 3,387 Days
• Field of Search: 709/223
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0654 using network fault recovery ring fault isolation or reconfiguration in loop networks without recovery actions by a network management system H04L12/437
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0823 Errors, e.g. transmission errors
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/2564 for a higher-layer protocol, e.g. for session initiation protocol [SIP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/2567 for reachability, e.g. inquiring the address of a correspondent behind a NAT server
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/02 for separating internal from external traffic, e.g. firewalls
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0209 Architectural arrangements, e.g. perimeter networks or demilitarized zones
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/029 Firewall traversal, e.g. tunnelling or, creating pinholes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/14 Session management for real-time applications in data packet communications networks H04L65/1066
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/142 Managing session states for stateless protocols; Signalling session states; State transitions; Keeping-state mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/145 avoiding end of session, e.g. keep-alive, heartbeats, resumption message or wake-up for inactive or interrupted session
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/2895 Intermediate processing functionally located close to the data provider application, e.g. reverse proxies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/563 Data redirection of data network streams
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/568 Storing data temporarily at an intermediate stage, e.g. caching
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/14 Multichannel or multilink protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/16 Implementation or adaptation of Internet protocol [IP], of transmission control protocol [TCP] or of user datagram protocol [UDP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/161 Implementation details of TCP/IP or UDP/IP stack architecture; Specification of modified or new header fields
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/163 In-band adaptation of TCP data exchange; In-band control procedures

Abstract

A method and apparatus for a connection manager have been disclosed. By providing for persistent connections with clients, the connection manager allows for servers to communicate with clients, which would otherwise be inaccessible.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving a plurality of client connection requests;

establishing a connection to the plurality of clients;

creating for each connection a data structure, the data structure having a state of the connection and a reference to buffers for the connection, the state of the connection being one of three states selected from the group consisting of active, inactive-idle, and inactive-sleep;

maintaining substantially persistent connections with the plurality of clients;

establishing a new client connection based on an active communication wherein the new client is not one of the plurality of clients with the maintained substantially persistent connections; and

killing a receive thread of an inactive-idle connection.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein three or more of the plurality of client connection requests are temporally disparate.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the connection with the new client communicates utilizing a connection, protocol, or language selected from the group consisting of TCP, HTTP, UDP, FTP, PPP, IP, Internet, wired, wireless, and XML.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the new client connection persistency is based upon the new client being in the active state of communication.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the active state of communication further comprises communicating a transfer of a payment and/or credit.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising transitioning information in the data structure of said substantially persistent connections to other memory storage resources.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein said information in the data structure stored in a first memory is transitioned to a second memory, said second memory slower in access time than said first memory.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising releasing buffers associated with said substantially persistent connections when said substantially persistent connections are in the inactive-idle state of connection.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising storing the data structure of an inactive-sleep connection to another storage.

10. A method comprising:

receiving a plurality of client connection requests;

establishing a connection to the plurality of clients;

creating for each connection a data structure, the data structure having a state of the connection and a reference to buffers for the connection, the state of the connection being one of three states selected from the group consisting of active, inactive-idle, and inactive-sleep;

maintaining substantially persistent connections with the plurality of clients;

determining if a connection threshold has been reached;

when the connection threshold has been reached scanning all the data structures for a candidate connection to be transitioned to inactive-idle;

when the connection threshold has not been reached determining if a performance threshold has been reached;

when the performance threshold has been reached scanning all the data structures for a candidate connection to be transitioned to inactive-idle; and

when the candidate connection to be transitioned to inactive-idle has been identified then for the identified candidate connection, freeing the identified candidate connection buffers, freeing other identified candidate connection resources, removing the identified candidate connection from the active state of connection and indicating the state of connection of the identified candidate connection as inactive-idle.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein after the indicating the state of connection of the identified candidate connection as inactive-idle then killing a receive thread of the identified candidate connection but not tearing down the identified candidate connection.

12. A method comprising:

receiving a plurality of client connection requests;

establishing a connection to the plurality of clients;

creating for each connection a data structure, the data structure having a state of the connection and a reference to buffers for the connection, the state of the connection being one of three states selected from the group consisting of active, inactive-idle, and inactive-sleep;

maintaining substantially persistent connections with the plurality of clients;

determining if a connection threshold has been reached;

when a performance threshold has been reached scanning all the data structures for a candidate connection to be transitioned to inactive-sleep; and

further comprising when the candidate connection to be transitioned to inactive-sleep has been identified then for the identified candidate connection, caching the identified candidate connection state of connection to a slower access memory, freeing other identified candidate connection resources, removing the identified candidate connection from the active-idle state of connection and indicating the state of connection of the identified candidate connection as inactive-sleep.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein after the indicating the state of connection of the identified candidate connection as inactive-sleep not tearing down the identified candidate connection.