Patent ID: 9584422
Date: 2017-02-28
CPC Classifications: H04L

Claim:
1. A method for automating return traffic redirection, the method comprising: at a service appliance, establishing a communication channel between the service appliance and a packet-forwarding element; at the service appliance, transmitting an out-of-band message over the communication channel to the packet-forwarding element, the message comprising a forwarding policy that requests the packet-forwarding element to forward predetermined packets to the service appliance, at the service appliance, receiving a packet having a source address of a client device and a destination address of the service appliance; at the service appliance, performing a load balancing algorithm to select a server among one or more servers; at the service appliance, changing the destination address of the packet to an address of the selected server; at the service appliance, forwarding the packet having the source address of the client device and the destination address of the selected server; at the service appliance, receiving a message from the packet-forwarding element indicating a change in network configuration; at the service appliance, generating an updated forwarding policy that reflects the change in network configuration; and at the service appliance, transmitting an updated out-of-band message over the communication channel to the packet-forwarding element, the message comprising the updated forwarding policy.