Patents by Inventor Todd J. Williamson

Todd J. Williamson has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Publication number: 20240089287
    Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure involve systems, methods, computer program products, and the like, for an orchestrator device associated with a scrubbing environment of a telecommunications network that receives one or more announced routing protocol advertisements from a customer device under an attack. In response to receiving the announcement, the orchestrator may configure one or more scrubbing devices of the network to begin providing the scrubbing service to packets matching the received routing announcement. A scrubbing service state for the customer may also be obtained or determined by the orchestrator. With the received route announcement and the customer profile and state information, the orchestrator may provide instructions to configure the scrubbing devices of the network based on the received information to dynamically automate scrubbing techniques without the need for a network administrator to manually configure the scrubbing environment or devices.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 22, 2023
    Publication date: March 14, 2024
    Applicant: Level 3 Communications, LLC
    Inventors: Todd J. Williamson, Brent W. Smith
  • Patent number: 11831673
    Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure involve systems, methods, computer program products, and the like, for an orchestrator device associated with a scrubbing environment of a telecommunications network that receives one or more announced routing protocol advertisements from a customer device under an attack. In response to receiving the announcement, the orchestrator may configure one or more scrubbing devices of the network to begin providing the scrubbing service to packets matching the received routing announcement. A scrubbing service state for the customer may also be obtained or determined by the orchestrator. With the received route announcement and the customer profile and state information, the orchestrator may provide instructions to configure the scrubbing devices of the network based on the received information to dynamically automate scrubbing techniques without the need for a network administrator to manually configure the scrubbing environment or devices.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 2, 2022
    Date of Patent: November 28, 2023
    Assignee: Level 3 Communications, LLC
    Inventors: Todd J. Williamson, Brent W. Smith
  • Publication number: 20220417280
    Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure involve systems, methods, computer program products, and the like, for an orchestrator device associated with a scrubbing environment of a telecommunications network that receives one or more announced routing protocol advertisements from a customer device under an attack. In response to receiving the announcement, the orchestrator may configure one or more scrubbing devices of the network to begin providing the scrubbing service to packets matching the received routing announcement. A scrubbing service state for the customer may also be obtained or determined by the orchestrator. With the received route announcement and the customer profile and state information, the orchestrator may provide instructions to configure the scrubbing devices of the network based on the received information to dynamically automate scrubbing techniques without the need for a network administrator to manually configure the scrubbing environment or devices.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 2, 2022
    Publication date: December 29, 2022
    Applicant: Level 3 Communications, LLC
    Inventors: Todd J. Williamson, Brent W. Smith
  • Patent number: 11438372
    Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure involve systems, methods, computer program products, and the like, for an orchestrator device associated with a scrubbing environment of a telecommunications network that receives one or more announced routing protocol advertisements from a customer device under an attack. In response to receiving the announcement, the orchestrator may configure one or more scrubbing devices of the network to begin providing the scrubbing service to packets matching the received routing announcement. A scrubbing service state for the customer may also be obtained or determined by the orchestrator. With the received route announcement and the customer profile and state information, the orchestrator may provide instructions to configure the scrubbing devices of the network based on the received information to dynamically automate scrubbing techniques without the need for a network administrator to manually configure the scrubbing environment or devices.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 21, 2020
    Date of Patent: September 6, 2022
    Assignee: Level 3 Communications, LLC
    Inventors: Todd J. Williamson, Brent W. Smith
  • Publication number: 20210266342
    Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure involve systems, methods, computer program products, and the like, for providing a proxy server or scrubbing service for an authoritative domain name server (DNS) of a CDN to prevent or otherwise mitigate attacks on the server. The proxy server may receive incoming requests to the authoritative DNS and determine which requests are valid and which are potentially part of an attack on the network. In one embodiment, the proxy server may then “scrub” or otherwise remove the requests of the attack to mitigate the effect of the attack on the network. For example, the proxy server may ignore the request, may direct the request to a “dead-end” server or other device to prevent overloading of the target device, may instruct a device from which the request was sent to discard the request, etc.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 10, 2021
    Publication date: August 26, 2021
    Applicant: Level 3 Communications, LLC
    Inventors: Joelle T. Maslak, Todd J. Williamson, Kevin Brady
  • Patent number: 11012467
    Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure involve systems, methods, computer program products, and the like, for providing a proxy server or scrubbing service for an authoritative domain name server (DNS) of a CDN to prevent or otherwise mitigate attacks on the server. The proxy server may receive incoming requests to the authoritative DNS and determine which requests are valid and which are potentially part of an attack on the network. In one embodiment, the proxy server may then “scrub” or otherwise remove the requests of the attack to mitigate the effect of the attack on the network. For example, the proxy server may ignore the request, may direct the request to a “dead-end” server or other device to prevent overloading of the target device, may instruct a device from which the request was sent to discard the request, etc.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 26, 2018
    Date of Patent: May 18, 2021
    Assignee: Level 3 Communications, LLC
    Inventors: Joelle T. Maslak, Todd J. Williamson, Kevin Brady
  • Publication number: 20210037051
    Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure involve systems, methods, computer program products, and the like, for an orchestrator device associated with a scrubbing environment of a telecommunications network that receives one or more announced routing protocol advertisements from a customer device under an attack. In response to receiving the announcement, the orchestrator may configure one or more scrubbing devices of the network to begin providing the scrubbing service to packets matching the received routing announcement. A scrubbing service state for the customer may also be obtained or determined by the orchestrator. With the received route announcement and the customer profile and state information, the orchestrator may provide instructions to configure the scrubbing devices of the network based on the received information to dynamically automate scrubbing techniques without the need for a network administrator to manually configure the scrubbing environment or devices.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 21, 2020
    Publication date: February 4, 2021
    Applicant: Level 3 Communications, LLC
    Inventors: Todd J. Williamson, Brent W. Smith
  • Patent number: 10819739
    Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure involve systems, methods, computer program products, and the like, for an orchestrator device associated with a scrubbing environment of a telecommunications network that receives one or more announced routing protocol advertisements from a customer device under an attack. In response to receiving the announcement, the orchestrator may configure one or more scrubbing devices of the network to begin providing the scrubbing service to packets matching the received routing announcement. A scrubbing service state for the customer may also be obtained or determined by the orchestrator. With the received route announcement and the customer profile and state information, the orchestrator may provide instructions to configure the scrubbing devices of the network based on the received information to dynamically automate scrubbing techniques without the need for a network administrator to manually configure the scrubbing environment or devices.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 18, 2018
    Date of Patent: October 27, 2020
    Assignee: Level 3 Communications, LLC
    Inventors: Todd J. Williamson, Brent W. Smith
  • Publication number: 20180302436
    Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure involve systems, methods, computer program products, and the like, for an orchestrator device associated with a scrubbing environment of a telecommunications network that receives one or more announced routing protocol advertisements from a customer device under an attack. In response to receiving the announcement, the orchestrator may configure one or more scrubbing devices of the network to begin providing the scrubbing service to packets matching the received routing announcement. A scrubbing service state for the customer may also be obtained or determined by the orchestrator. With the received route announcement and the customer profile and state information, the orchestrator may provide instructions to configure the scrubbing devices of the network based on the received information to dynamically automate scrubbing techniques without the need for a network administrator to manually configure the scrubbing environment or devices.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 18, 2018
    Publication date: October 18, 2018
    Applicant: Level 3 Communications, LLC
    Inventors: Todd J. Williamson, Brent W. Smith
  • Publication number: 20180219912
    Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure involve systems, methods, computer program products, and the like, for providing a proxy server or scrubbing service for an authoritative domain name server (DNS) of a CDN to prevent or otherwise mitigate attacks on the server. The proxy server may receive incoming requests to the authoritative DNS and determine which requests are valid and which are potentially part of an attack on the network. In one embodiment, the proxy server may then “scrub” or otherwise remove the requests of the attack to mitigate the effect of the attack on the network. For example, the proxy server may ignore the request, may direct the request to a “dead-end” server or other device to prevent overloading of the target device, may instruct a device from which the request was sent to discard the request, etc.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 26, 2018
    Publication date: August 2, 2018
    Applicant: Level 3 Communications, LLC
    Inventors: Joel C. Maslak, Todd J. Williamson, Kevin Brady