Patent ID: 6658469
Filing Date: 2003-12-02
Classification: G06F,H04L

Abstract:
A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for directing network data transfer, the instructions comprising:building a table mapping local internet protocol sub-networks to a plurality of alternative transport providers, each of the alternative transport providers capable of providing multi-gigabytes of data per second; detecting a call by a first application executing on the computer to transfer data to a second application; determining whether the call identifies a sub-network served by one of a plurality of alternative transport providers, the determining via consulting the table of local internet protocol (IP) sub-networks served by the plurality of alternative transport providers, the consulting to determine if a local name referenced in the call matches one of the plurality of alternative transport providers; if the call identifies a sub-network served by one of the plurality of alternative transport providers: selecting one of the plurality of alternative transport providers; invoking said one of the plurality of alternative transport providers to transfer data through said sub-network by creating a socket and emulating semantics of the primary transport provider; binding the socket to a primary transport provider address matching a previously-created socket; and if the call identifies a sub-network served by one of the plurality of alternative transport providers, invoking a primary transport provider to create a primary transport socket for transferring data to the second application and storing a descriptor for the primary transport socket in a private data structure associated with the primary transport socket, the private data structure storage enabling service by the primary transport provider should one of the plurality of alternative transport providers fail to process the call.