Abstract: Fulfillment of web-service requests may be facilitated by intelligently load balancing the web-service requests between servers or server clusters configured to perform the requested web-service. Load balancing may be based on the type of request, target class of server, whether the request is likely to spawn any subsequent requests, relevant historical information, other requests, current and anticipated work load on the servers, the current ability of the servers to handle additional requests, the numbers type and schedule of requests in a queue waiting to be allocated to one or more of the servers, and numerous other factors that may affect the servers' ability to process the request. Requests may be classified to enable historical correlation between how servers have handled previous requests and the present request. Additionally, requests may be scheduled for future execution and monitored during execution.

Abstract: Fulfillment of web-service requests may be facilitated by intelligently load balancing the web-service requests between servers or server clusters configured to perform the requested web-service. Load balancing may be based on the type of request, target class of server, whether the request is likely to spawn any subsequent requests, relevant historical information, other requests, current and anticipated work load on the servers, the current ability of the servers to handle additional requests, the numbers type and schedule of requests in a queue waiting to be allocated to one or more of the servers, and numerous other factors that may affect the servers' ability to process the request. Requests may be classified to enable historical correlation between how servers have handled previous requests and the present request. Additionally, requests may be scheduled for future execution and monitored during execution.

Abstract: The present invention facilitates routing traffic over a network and distributing application level support among multiple routing devices during routing. Routing nodes are configured to process the content of the traffic to provide the requisite application level support. The traffic is routed, in part, based on the resources available for providing the processing. The processing of the traffic may be distributed throughout the network based on processing capacity of the routing nodes at any given time and given the amount of network congestion.

Abstract: The present invention provides a routing architecture including a control plane, a compute plane, and a forward plane. The forward plane provides traditional forwarding of packets to the next-hop address, along with any necessary header manipulation, while the control plane configures the forward plane and the compute plane for desired operation. The compute plane is configured for high-speed processing of packets to provide application level support, including manipulating application data in the payload of the packets during routing. The forward plane preferably implements forwarding rules using filters sufficient to forward a received packet to the next-hop address, to the compute plane for application processing, or to the control plane to facilitate control or configuration.

Abstract: Fulfillment of web-service requests may be facilitated by intelligently load balancing the web-service requests between servers or server clusters configured to perform the requested web-service. Load balancing may be based on the type of request, target class of server, whether the request is likely to spawn any subsequent requests, relevant historical information, other requests, current and anticipated work load on the servers, the current ability of the servers to handle additional requests, the numbers type and schedule of requests in a queue waiting to be allocated to one or more of the servers, and numerous other factors that may affect the servers' ability to process the request. Requests may be classified to enable historical correlation between how servers have handled previous requests and the present request. Additionally, requests may be scheduled for future execution and monitored during execution.

Abstract: Distributed security for industrial networks is achieved through the implementation of Security Policy Implementation Points (SPIPs) on the network to apply security policy in a distributed fashion to prevent network users from taking action in particular areas of the network. The SPIP integrates with network services to perform authentication and authorization services on behalf of particular factory machines, groups of factory machines, and other industrial network resources. The SPIP also maintains a local access policy to enable emergency access to the factory machines as well as enable local access to attendant programmable logic controllers. The SPIP also includes audit functionality to enable the SPIP to record local accesses and network accesses to maintain a log of users and network devices that have interfaced with the SPIP. The SPIP may also support VPNs, encryption, compression, and numerous other functions to engage in communications on the network.