ACCELERATING DATA COMMUNICATION USING TUNNELS

摘要

Methods and systems are provided for increasing application performance and accelerating data communications in a WAN environment. According to one embodiment, packets are received at a flow classification module operating at the Internet Protocol (IP) layer of a first wide area network (WAN) acceleration device via a private tunnel, which is operable to convey application layer data for connection-oriented applications between WAN acceleration devices. The packets are passed to a WAN socket operating at the transport layer. Based on the application protocol, the packets are passed to an application handler of multiple application handlers operating at the application layer each of which implements one or more application acceleration techniques for a particular application layer protocol known to behave poorly within a WAN environment. The existing connection-oriented flow is securely accelerated by performing one or more application acceleration techniques and applying one or more security functions.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:
establishing, between a first wide are network (WAN) acceleration device operable at an edge of a first subnet of an enterprise network and a second WAN acceleration device operable at an edge of a second subnet of the enterprise network, a private tunnel, wherein the private tunnel is used by the first and second WAN acceleration devices to convey application layer data for a particular connection-oriented application layer protocol of a plurality of connection-oriented application layer protocols known to behave poorly within a WAN environment and that are capable of being accelerated by the first and second WAN acceleration devices; receiving, by a flow classification module executing on the first WAN acceleration device at an Internet Protocol (IP) layer of a protocol stack of the first WAN acceleration device, packets from the second WAN acceleration device via the private tunnel; passing, by the flow classification module, the packets to a transport layer of the protocol stack via a WAN socket executing on the first WAN acceleration device at the transport layer, wherein the WAN socket represents an interface between the first and second WAN acceleration devices for connection-oriented application layer protocol traffic; based on the particular application layer protocol with which the packets are associated, passing, by the WAN socket, the packets to an application handler of a plurality of application handlers executing on the first WAN acceleration device at an application layer of the protocol stack, each of the plurality of application handlers implementing one or more application acceleration techniques for an associated application layer protocol of the plurality of connection-oriented application layer protocols; and securely accelerating the connection-oriented application layer protocol traffic, by the application handler, by performing the one or more application acceleration techniques and applying one or more security functions.