Abstract: In certain environments all or part of the TCP signaling traffic may be lost before reaching one or both TCP endpoints, leading to no connection establishment or slow page download times. Embodiments of this invention improve TCP performance over unreliable links and allow TCP connections to be set up when otherwise not possible. Embodiments of this invention include the use of out-of-band signaling for TCP to synchronizing and establishing a connection between two TCP endpoints without modification to the TCP/IP protocol suite. Embodiments of this invention provide a system that creates a control channel to enable out-of-band signaling for TCP connection establishment between two TCP endpoints.

Abstract: Firewalls and network address translators (NAT) provide many advantages for client and the Internet itself, however, these devices break many existing transmission control protocol (TCP)/Internet Protocol (IP) applications, since they conceal the identity of IP clients (i.e., peers) and block transmission control protocol (TCP) call setup requests. Firewalls and NATs make it impossible for one TCP peer to discover another and establish a connection. Embodiments of this invention provides a system and a protocol to enable two TCP peers that exist behind one or more firewalls and NATs to automatically setup a true peer-to-peer TCP connection and exchange data without making changes to the firewall or NAT devices or existing TCP-based applications.