Patents Assigned to F5 NETWORKS
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Publication number: 20130204893Abstract: A method, computer readable medium, and system for generating a unified virtual snapshot in accordance with embodiments of the present invention includes invoking with a file virtualization system a capture of a plurality of physical snapshots. Each of the physical snapshots comprises content at a given point in time in one of the plurality of data storage systems. A unified virtual snapshot is generated with the file virtualization system based on the captured plurality of the physical snapshots.Type: ApplicationFiled: December 20, 2012Publication date: August 8, 2013Applicant: F5 NETWORKS, INC.Inventor: F5 NETWORKS, INC.
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Patent number: 8499100Abstract: A method, system, and apparatus are directed towards compression of content. A portion of content may be compressed using a compression mode. One or more criteria may be evaluated. Based on the evaluated criteria, a decision is made as to whether to select a different compression mode. If selected, the different compression mode may be used to compress another portion of the content. Additional compression modes may be selected and used to compress the content.Type: GrantFiled: March 21, 2012Date of Patent: July 30, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventor: Jesse Abraham Rothstein
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Patent number: 8484361Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus are directed towards managing a network communication. A Secured Socket Layer (SSL) session identifier (ID) is received within an SSL handshake protocol message for establishing an SSL connection. The SSL session ID is combined with a pre-determined ID associated with a network device to generate another ID. The other ID may comprise a plurality of information associated with an operation for caching the SSL session ID and/or for caching other information usable in re-establishing an SSL session over the SSL connection. The plurality of information may comprise an expiration time, a cache line, a cache ID, and a unique ID. Based on at least a portion of the other ID, a failure statistic associated with re-establishing the SSL session for the SSL connection is determined. A session cache and/or the operation for caching are tuned based on the failure statistic.Type: GrantFiled: January 26, 2012Date of Patent: July 9, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventor: Jonathan Mini Hawthorne
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Publication number: 20130173779Abstract: A method, non-transitory computer readable medium, and device that identifies network traffic characteristics to correlate and manage one or more subsequent flows includes transmitting a monitoring request comprising one or more attributes extracted from an HTTP request received from a client computing device and a timestamp to a monitoring server to correlate one or more subsequent flows associated with the HTTP request. The HTTP request is transmitted to an application server after receiving an acknowledgement response to the monitoring request from the monitoring server. An HTTP response to the HTTP request is received from the application server. An operation with respect to the HTTP response is performed.Type: ApplicationFiled: December 30, 2011Publication date: July 4, 2013Applicant: F5 NETWORKS, INC.Inventors: Dmitry Rovniaguin, Ephraim Dan, Ron Talmor
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Patent number: 8477798Abstract: A method, system, and apparatus are directed towards selectively concatenating data into a packet to modify a number of packets transmitted over a network based on a combination of network and/or send-queue metrics. In one embodiment, Nagle's algorithm is used for concatenating data into a packet. The concatenation may be selectively enabled based on heuristics applied to the combination of metrics. In one embodiment, the result may indicate that there should be a concatenation, or that data should be sent immediately, or that a current state for whether to concatenate or not should be maintained. The heuristics may include an expert system, decision tree, truth table, function, or the like. The heuristics may be provided by a user, or another computing device. In another embodiment, the concatenation may be enabled based on a conditional probability determined from the combination of metrics.Type: GrantFiled: December 15, 2010Date of Patent: July 2, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventors: Arindum Mukerji, Jesse Abraham Rothstein
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Patent number: 8477609Abstract: Distributing network traffic to multiple traffic management devices. A distributor receives packets from a network and may act as a layer 2 switch or router, to distribute the packet to one of a group of traffic management devices. The distributor may receive packets from servers that the traffic management devices are managing communications to. When distributing packets to traffic management devices, information may be used to determine which traffic management device each packet should be sent to. The distributor causes packets in a flow to be delivered to the same traffic management device. Many configurations are possible for connecting the distributor to the traffic management devices, including connecting each traffic management device to a physical or virtual port on the distributor, connecting the traffic management devices to the distributor using a virtual local area network, and connecting the traffic management devices to a layer 2 switch.Type: GrantFiled: March 12, 2010Date of Patent: July 2, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventors: Carlton G. Amdahl, Robert G. Gilde, Paul I. Szabo, Richard R. Masters, David D. Schmitt
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Patent number: 8463850Abstract: A system, medium and method for generating a server side transaction ID (XID?) is disclosed. A request is received from a client device to access a server. The request includes a source port, source IP address, protocol information and a client generated transaction ID (XID). An endian'ness of the client of determined and classified. A Client ID unique to the client request is then generated using the source port, source IP address, protocol information, and a Masked XID generated from the endian'ness determination and the XID. A server side transaction ID (XID?) is then synthesized by combining the Client ID and an XID halfword containing least significant bits (LSB) identified from the endian'ness determination. The XID? is then transmitted to the file server, wherein the XID? is associated with the XID for the corresponding client request.Type: GrantFiled: October 26, 2011Date of Patent: June 11, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventor: Benjamin E. McCann
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Patent number: 8463909Abstract: A method, computer readable medium, and apparatus for managing server resources includes receiving at a traffic management device one or more requests in a message based protocol. The traffic management device determines a difference between a level of utilization of resources maintained by a server that handles the one or more received requests and a threshold level of utilization of resources that can be maintained by the server; and randomly delays the one or more requests based upon the determined difference.Type: GrantFiled: September 15, 2010Date of Patent: June 11, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventors: Paul I. Szabo, Nat Thirasuttakorn, Benn Bollay
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Patent number: 8453120Abstract: A hardware and/or software facility for executing a multithreaded program is described. The facility causes each of a plurality of machines to execute the multithreaded program deterministically, such that the deterministic execution of the multithreaded program is replaced across the plurality of machines. The facility detects a problem in the execution of the multithreaded Program by one of the plurality of machines. In response, the facility adjusts the execution of the multithreaded program by at least one of the machines of the plurality.Type: GrantFiled: May 11, 2010Date of Patent: May 28, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventors: Luis Ceze, Peter J. Godman, Mark H. Oskin
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Patent number: 8447884Abstract: A method, computer readable medium, and system for handling network packets at an application delivery controller includes receiving a packet from a communication network at a network interface controller within the application delivery controller and associating the received packet with a logical interface selected from a plurality of logical interfaces in at least one processing system using a mapping engine at the network interface controller, where each of the plurality of logical interfaces associated with a different physical address. At the network interface controller a physical address is assigned to the received packet corresponding to the selected logical interface to which data in the received packet is to be sent and a virtual address associated with the physical address in the network interface controller is retrieved. Data in the received packet and the retrieved virtual address is transmitted to the at least one processing system.Type: GrantFiled: December 1, 2009Date of Patent: May 21, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventor: William R. Baumann
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Patent number: 8447883Abstract: A load balancer, comprising a network interface, a power conservation unit, and a routing module configured to route client requests received through the network interface to a plurality of servers. The power conservation unit is characterized by having a learning mode and a routing mode. In the learning mode one or more operation parameters of the servers are determined for a plurality of different external conditions and for a plurality of different values of one or more operation parameters of the routing module, and to generate a correlation table between the operation parameters of the routing module and the external conditions. In the routing mode the power conservation unit adjusts the operation parameters of the routing module responsive to the external conditions, using the correlation table.Type: GrantFiled: August 30, 2012Date of Patent: May 21, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventors: Uri Hasson, Michael Shurman
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Patent number: 8447871Abstract: An apparatus is related to connection management for a communications network. A control component receives a data flow requesting a resource from a client, identifies the client, and determines when the data flow is unassociated with a connection to a requested resource. The control component selects a new content server for an unassociated resource request when either the identified client was previously unknown or the identified client has exceeded a maximum number of connections with a previously selected content server. The control component selects the previously selected content server when the identified client has not exceeded the maximum number of connections. A switch component is employed to maintain a connection between the client and the selected content server such that the client receives the requested resource. Utilizing cached connection information for up to “N” connections enhances the speed of connections between the client and the selected content server.Type: GrantFiled: April 25, 2008Date of Patent: May 21, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventor: Paul I. Szabo
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Patent number: 8438253Abstract: A method, system, machine-readable storage medium, and apparatus are directed towards upgrading a cluster by bifurcating the cluster into two virtual clusters, an “old” virtual cluster (old active cluster) and a “new” virtual cluster (new standby cluster), and iteratively upgrading members of the old cluster while moving them into the new cluster. While members are added to the new cluster, existing connections and new connections are seamlessly processed by the old cluster. Optionally, state mirroring occurs between the old cluster and the new cluster once the number of members of the old and new clusters are approximately equal. Once a threshold number of members have been transferred to the new cluster, control and processing may be taken over by the new cluster. Transfer of control from the old cluster to the new cluster may be performed by failing over connectivity from the old cluster to the new cluster.Type: GrantFiled: May 25, 2012Date of Patent: May 7, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventors: Paul I. Szabo, Bryan D. Skene, Saxon Amdahl
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Patent number: 8432791Abstract: A method, system, and apparatus for managing routing to redundant data centers. Each data center has an associated traffic management device (TMD) that manages traffic with at least one server. The TMDs may determine a priority for the data centers, and advertise that priority, along with other configuration information, to at least one designated router. The configuration information includes a Virtual Internet Protocol (VIP) address that is identical for each of the TMDs. Based on the advertised priorities the designated router routes network traffic to at least one of the data centers. Each TMD monitors a variety of criteria to determine if it is appropriate to change the priority of its associated data center to the designated router. If a data center's priority changes, the associated TMD advertises the change to the designated router, enabling it to dynamically update its routing tables to direct traffic towards a different data center.Type: GrantFiled: October 7, 2005Date of Patent: April 30, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventor: Richard R. Masters
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Patent number: 8432799Abstract: The present invention relates to increasing performance of Wide Area Network (WAN) communications and in particular to a redundant proxy device associated with one end of a transport layer connection that monitors packet traffic and selectively reroutes packets to a proxy application.Type: GrantFiled: May 18, 2012Date of Patent: April 30, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventors: Youssri Helmy, Tarek Nabhan
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Patent number: 8433735Abstract: In an aggregated file system, metadata is partitioned into multiple metadata volumes. On receipt of a file processing request, a file switch examines its mount entry cache to identify a target metadata volume that hosts the metadata of the requested file. The identification begins with mount entries at a root volume and continues recursively by examining a portion of the absolute pathname of the file until the target metadata volume is identified. Finally, the file switch forwards the request to a metadata server managing the target metadata volume. Since the identification process is carried out completely within the file switch, there is no need for multiple expensive network accesses to different metadata servers.Type: GrantFiled: December 20, 2010Date of Patent: April 30, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventor: Francesco Lacapra
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Patent number: 8429738Abstract: A system and method for performing asynchronous cryptographic operations. A cryptographic toolkit receives requests for cryptographic operations, and initiates the cryptographic operations within a thread of execution. The toolkit detects when the cryptographic operations are complete, retrieves the results, and returns the results to a calling program. The cryptographic operations are performed in an asynchronous manner, without blocking a calling program. The calling program can specify whether the requested operations are to be performed without blocking.Type: GrantFiled: November 21, 2011Date of Patent: April 23, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventors: John R. Hughes, Richard Roderick Masters, David D. Schmitt
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Publication number: 20130097383Abstract: A method, computer readable medium, and system for generating a response includes determining from which of a plurality of levels of cache to retrieve a response. The determination is based on a number of matches between current user session data associated with a current request and stored user session data rewritten into each of one or more metadata data variables for the response when a current request for the response matches at least one prior stored request for the response. The response from the determined level of the plurality of levels of cache is provided.Type: ApplicationFiled: May 25, 2012Publication date: April 18, 2013Applicant: F5 NETWORKS, INC.Inventor: Ravi Natarajan
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Patent number: 8417681Abstract: A switched file system, also termed a file switch, is logically positioned between client computers and file servers in a computer network. The file switch distributes user files among multiple file servers using aggregated file, transaction and directory mechanisms. The file switch ensures consistent and atomic behavior of the switched file system by aggregating in a deterministic way the transactions initiated by the client of multiple independent file switches so that only one of the multiple concurrent transactions attempted on the same aggregated data file may succeed, or so that the transactions are serialized so as to be performed as a sequence of atomic operations. In addition, the integrity of the aggregated data file is safeguarded by issuing locking requests on behalf of certain client applications that do not observe locking mechanism consistently.Type: GrantFiled: March 20, 2009Date of Patent: April 9, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventors: Vladimir I. Miloushev, Peter A. Nickolov
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Patent number: 8418233Abstract: A system, apparatus, and method are directed to managing access to a resource using rule-based deep packet extractions of a credential. A network device, such as a traffic management device, is situated between a client device and a server device. When the client device sends a request for a resource, the request is intercepted by the network device. The network device may employ a multi-layer deep packet extraction of the credential from the request. The network device may then use the credential to determine whether the request enabled to access the resource. Based, in part, on a variety of rules, the network device may deny access, enable access, route the request to a different server, or the like. In one embodiment, the network device may receive a rule from another device that directs the network device to request a different credential.Type: GrantFiled: October 24, 2005Date of Patent: April 9, 2013Assignee: F5 Networks, Inc.Inventor: John Robert Hughes