Patent ID: 11863514
Assignee: VMWARE LLC
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC G  H

Claim 12:
13. A method of load balancing data message flows across a plurality of secure connections, the method comprising:
receiving a data message having source and destination addresses formatted according to a first protocol;
based on the source and destination addresses, selecting one of the plurality of secure connections for the data message, wherein each of the secure connections handles a first set of connections formatted according to the first protocol and a second set of connections formatted according to a second protocol that is an alternative to the first protocol; and
securely encapsulating the data message and forwarding the encapsulated data message onto a network, wherein the encapsulation comprises an identifier for the selected secure connection,
wherein the first protocol is IPv4 and the second protocol is IPv6, and each of the secure connections is a different mixed mode IPsec security association (SA) that handles both IPv4 and IPv6 connections.