Abstract:
Stream-based data deduplication is provided in a multi-tenant shared infrastructure but without requiring “paired” endpoints having synchronized data dictionaries. In this approach, data objects processed by the dedupe functionality are treated as objects that can be fetched as needed. Because the compressed objects are treated as just objects, a decoding peer does not need to maintain a symmetric library for the origin. Rather, if the peer does not have the chunks in cache that it needs, it follows a conventional content delivery network (CDN) procedure to retrieve them. In this way, if dictionaries between pairs of sending and receiving peers are out-of-sync, relevant sections are the re-synchronized on-demand. The approach does not require that libraries maintained at a particular pair of sender and receiving peers are the same. Rather, the technique enables a peer, in effect, to “backfill” its dictionary on-the-fly.

Description:
[0001]    This application is based on and claims priority to Ser. No. 61/648,209, filed May 17, 2012. 
     
    
     BACKGROUND 
       [0002]    1. Technical Field 
         [0003]    This application relates generally to data communication over a network. 
         [0004]    2. Brief Description of the Related Art 
         [0005]    Distributed computer systems are well-known in the prior art. One such distributed computer system is a “content delivery network” or “CDN” that typically is operated and managed by a service provider. The service provider typically provides the content delivery service on behalf of third parties (customers) who use the service provider&#39;s shared infrastructure. A distributed system of this type is sometimes referred to as an “overlay network” and typically refers to a collection of autonomous computers linked by a network or networks, together with the software, systems, protocols and techniques designed to facilitate various services, such as content delivery, application acceleration, or other support of outsourced origin site infrastructure. A CDN service provider typically provides service delivery through digital properties (such as a website), which are provisioned in a customer portal and then deployed to the network. 
         [0006]    Data differencing is a known technology and method to leverage shared prior instances of a resource, also known as versions of data within a shared dictionary in compression terminology, between a server and a client; the process works by only sending the differences or changes that have occurred since those prior instance(s). Data differencing is related to compression, but it is a slightly distinct concept. In particular, intuitively, a difference (“diff”) is a form of compression. As long as the receiver has the same original file as a sender, that sender can give the receiver a diff instead of the entire new file. The diff in effect explains how to create the new file from the old. It is usually much smaller than the whole new file and thus is a form of compression. The diff between a first version of a document and a second version of that same document is the data difference; the data difference is the result of compression of the second version of a document using the first version of the document as a preset dictionary. 
         [0007]    Stream-based data deduplication (“dedupe”) systems are also known in the prior art. In general, stream-based data deduplication systems work by examining the data that flows through a sending peer of a connection and replacing blocks of that data with references that point into a shared dictionary that each peer has synchronized around the given blocks. The reference itself is much smaller than the data and often is a hash or fingerprint of it. When a receiving peer receives the modified stream, it replaces the reference with the original data to make the stream whole again. For example, consider a system where the fingerprint is a unique hash that is represented with a single letter variable. The sending peer&#39;s dictionary then might look as shown in  FIG. 3 . The receiving peer&#39;s dictionary might look as shown in  FIG. 4 . Then, for example, if the sending peer is supposed to send a string such as “Hello, how are you? Akamai is Awesome!” the deduplication system would instead process the data and send the following message: “He[X]re you? [T][M] ome!” The receiving peer decodes the message using its dictionary. Note that, in this example, the sending peer does not replace “ome!” with the reference [O]. This is because, although the sending peer has a fingerprint and block stored it its cache, that peer knows (through a mechanism) that the receiving peer does not. Therefore, the sending peer does not insert the reference in the message before sending it. A system of this type typically populates the dictionaries, which are symmetric, in one of several, known manners. In one approach, dictionary data is populated in fixed length blocks (e.g., every block is 15 characters in length) as a stream of data flows through the data processor. The first time the data passes through both the sending and receiving peers, and assuming they both construct dictionaries in the same way, both peers end up having a dictionary that contains the same entries. This approach, however, is non-optimal, as it is subject to a problem known as the “shift” problem, which can adversely affect the generated fingerprints and undermining the entire scheme. 
         [0008]    An alternative approach uses variable-length blocks using hashes computed in a rolling manner. In a well-known solution based on a technique known as Rabin fingerprinting, the system slides a window of a certain size (e.g., 48 bytes) across a stream of data during the fingerprinting process. An implementation of the technique is described in a paper titled “A Low-Bandwidth Network File System” (LBFS), by Muthitacharoen et al, and the result achieves variable size shift-resistant blocks. 
         [0009]    Current vendors supplying stream-based data deduplication products and services address the problem of dictionary discovery (knowing what information is in a peer&#39;s dictionary) by pairing devices. Thus, for example, appliance/box vendors rely on a pair of devices or processes on each end to communicate with each other to maintain tables that let each side know what references exist in the paired peer. This type of solution, however, only works when dealing with individual boxes and units that represent “in path” pairs. 
         [0010]    In path-paired solutions, however, are not practical in the context of an overlay network such as a CDN, where the distribution of nodes more closely resembles a tree. Thus, for example, in a representative implementation, and with respect to a particular origin server (or, more generally, a “tenant” located at a “root”), the overlay may have parent tier servers closer to the root, and client edge servers closer to the leaf nodes. In other words, instead of a box needing to be aware of a small set of one or more peer boxes (such as in known box vendor solutions), a parent tier server may need to be in contact with tens, hundreds or even thousands of edge regions, each containing potentially many servers. In this context, per machine tables cannot scale. 
         [0011]    Thus, there remains a need to provide enhanced techniques for data deduplication in the context of an overlay network. 
       BRIEF SUMMARY 
       [0012]    An Internet infrastructure delivery platform (e.g., operated by a service provider) provides an overlay network (a “multi-tenant shared infrastructure”). A particular tenant has an associated origin. According to this disclosure, one or more overlay network servers that are near a tenant origin are equipped with a dedupe engine that provides data deduplication. These servers are dedupe cache parents for that origin in that they receive requests from overlay network cache childs, typically edge servers that are located near to end user access networks. An edge server also includes a dedupe engine. When a request for origin content arrives from an overlay network edge server, the request is routed through a dedupe cache parent for the origin. The cache parent retrieves the content (perhaps from the origin) and then performs a traditional dedupe operation. In particular, the cache parent first looks into its “library” (or “dictionary”) for the origin and sees if it can compress the object by replacing chunks of bytes that it has already seen with the names that have already been assigned for those chunks. This operation “compresses” the object in a known manner. The cache parent then sends the compressed object to the overlay network edge server, where it is processed by the edge server dedupe engine. Outside of this delivery loop, however, the dedupe cache parent also processes the object to store newly-seen chunks of bytes, and entering the new chunks into the library (or “dictionary”) that it maintains. When the compressed stream is received at the overlay network edge server, the edge server processes the compressed stream by looking for chunks that were replaced by names (or “fingerprints”), and then retrieving the original chunks using the fingerprints as keys into its own dictionary. 
         [0013]    If the edge server does not have the chunks in cache that it needs, it follows a conventional CDN approach to retrieve them (e.g., through a cache hierarchy or the like), ultimately retrieving them from the dedupe cache parent if necessary. Thus, if dictionaries between pairs of sending and receiving peers are out-of-sync, relevant sections are the re-synchronized on-demand. The approach does not require (or require a guarantee) that libraries maintained at a particular pair of sender and receiving peers are the same (i.e., synchronized). Rather, the technique enables a peer, in effect, to “backfill” its dictionary on-the-fly in association with an actual transaction. This approach is highly scalable, and it works for any type of content, and over any type of network. 
         [0014]    The foregoing has outlined some of the more pertinent features of the subject matter. These features should be construed to be merely illustrative. Many other beneficial results can be attained by applying the disclosed subject matter in a different manner or by modifying the subject matter as will be described. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0015]    For a more complete understanding of the subject matter and the advantages thereof, reference is now made to the following descriptions taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which: 
           [0016]      FIG. 1  is a block diagram illustrating a known distributed computer system configured as a content delivery network (CDN); 
           [0017]      FIG. 2  is a representative CDN edge machine configuration; 
           [0018]      FIG. 3  is a sending peer dictionary in a data differencing process; 
           [0019]      FIG. 4  is a receiving peer dictionary in a data differencing process; 
           [0020]      FIG. 5  is an exemplary wide area network (WAN) architecture for implementing the asynchronous data dictionary approach of this disclosure; and 
           [0021]      FIG. 6  is a specific embodiment implemented within an overlay network and a customer private network. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
       [0022]      FIG. 1  illustrates a known distributed computer system that (as described below) is extended by the techniques herein. 
         [0023]    In a known system, such as shown in  FIG. 1 , a distributed computer system  100  is configured as a CDN and is assumed to have a set of machines  102   a - n  distributed around the Internet. Typically, most of the machines are servers located near the edge of the Internet, i.e., at or adjacent end user access networks. A network operations command center (NOCC)  104  manages operations of the various machines in the system. Third party sites, such as web site  106 , offload delivery of content (e.g., HTML, embedded page objects, streaming media, software downloads, and the like) to the distributed computer system  100  and, in particular, to “edge” servers. Typically, content providers offload their content delivery by aliasing (e.g., by a DNS CNAME) given content provider domains or sub-domains to domains that are managed by the service provider&#39;s authoritative domain name service. End users that desire the content are directed to the distributed computer system to obtain that content more reliably and efficiently. Although not shown in detail, the distributed computer system may also include other infrastructure, such as a distributed data collection system  108  that collects usage and other data from the edge servers, aggregates that data across a region or set of regions, and passes that data to other back-end systems  110 ,  112 ,  114  and  116  to facilitate monitoring, logging, alerts, billing, management and other operational and administrative functions. Distributed network agents  118  monitor the network as well as the server loads and provide network, traffic and load data to a DNS query handling mechanism  115 , which is authoritative for content domains being managed by the CDN. A distributed data transport mechanism  120  may be used to distribute control information (e.g., metadata to manage content, to facilitate load balancing, and the like) to the edge servers. 
         [0024]    As illustrated in  FIG. 2 , a given machine  200  comprises commodity hardware (e.g., an Intel Pentium processor)  202  running an operating system kernel (such as Linux or variant)  204  that supports one or more applications  206   a - n.  To facilitate content delivery services, for example, given machines typically run a set of applications, such as an HTTP (web) proxy  207 , a name server  208 , a local monitoring process  210 , a distributed data collection process  212 , and the like. For streaming media, the machine typically includes one or more media servers, such as a Windows Media Server (WMS) or Flash server, as required by the supported media formats. 
         [0025]    A CDN edge server is configured to provide one or more extended content delivery features, preferably on a domain-specific, customer-specific basis, preferably using configuration files that are distributed to the edge servers using a configuration system. A given configuration file preferably is XML-based and includes a set of content handling rules and directives that facilitate one or more advanced content handling features. The configuration file may be delivered to the CDN edge server via the data transport mechanism. U.S. Pat. No. 7,111,057 illustrates a useful infrastructure for delivering and managing edge server content control information, and this and other edge server control information can be provisioned by the CDN service provider itself, or (via an extranet or the like) the content provider customer who operates the origin server. 
         [0026]    Because the CDN infrastructure is shared by multiple third parties, it is sometimes referred to herein as a multi-tenant shared infrastructure. The CDN processes may be located at nodes that are publicly-routable on the Internet, within or adjacent nodes that are located in mobile networks, in or adjacent enterprise-based private networks, or in any combination thereof. 
         [0027]    An overlay network web proxy (such as proxy  207  in  FIG. 2 ) that is metadata-configurable is sometimes referred to herein as a global host or GHost process. 
         [0028]    The CDN may include a storage subsystem, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,472,178, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. 
         [0029]    The CDN may operate a server cache hierarchy to provide intermediate caching of customer content; one such cache hierarchy subsystem is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,376,716, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. 
         [0030]    The CDN may provide secure content delivery among a client browser, edge server and customer origin server in the manner described in U.S. Publication No. 20040093419. Secure content delivery as described therein enforces SSL-based links between the client and the edge server process, on the one hand, and between the edge server process and an origin server process, on the other hand. This enables an SSL-protected web page and/or components thereof to be delivered via the edge server. 
         [0031]    As an overlay, the CDN resources may be used to facilitate wide area network (WAN) acceleration services between enterprise data centers (which may be privately-managed) and third party software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers. 
         [0032]    In a typical operation, a content provider identifies a content provider domain or sub-domain that it desires to have served by the CDN. The CDN service provider associates (e.g., via a canonical name, or CNAME) the content provider domain with an edge network (CDN) hostname, and the CDN provider then provides that edge network hostname to the content provider. When a DNS query to the content provider domain or sub-domain is received at the content provider&#39;s domain name servers, those servers respond by returning the edge network hostname. The edge network hostname points to the CDN, and that edge network hostname is then resolved through the CDN name service. To that end, the CDN name service returns one or more IP addresses. The requesting client browser then makes a content request (e.g., via HTTP or HTTPS) to an edge server associated with the IP address. The request includes a host header that includes the original content provider domain or sub-domain. Upon receipt of the request with the host header, the edge server checks its configuration file to determine whether the content domain or sub-domain requested is actually being handled by the CDN. If so, the edge server applies its content handling rules and directives for that domain or sub-domain as specified in the configuration. These content handling rules and directives may be located within an XML-based “metadata” configuration file. 
         [0033]    As additional background, the techniques described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,820,133 and 7,660,296 may be used to facilitate packet delivery between edge and forward proxies in an overlay network such as shown in  FIG. 1 . 
       Stream-Based Data Deduplication Using Asynchronous Data Dictionaries 
       [0034]    With the above as background, the approach of this disclosure is now described. In contrast to known stream-based data deduplication products and services that address the problem of dictionary discovery (knowing what information in a peer&#39;s dictionary) by pairing, the techniques herein operates according to a different paradigm. 
         [0035]    In particular, and for certain sized objects, a peer node is “assumed” to have a block associated with a fingerprint, whether or not it actually does. In this approach, the technique does not require (or require a guarantee) that libraries maintained at either end (of any particular pair of sender and receiving peers) are the same. Rather, in this approach, a library is created, and that library is the allowed to be accessible (e.g., over the web). The library can be located anywhere. As will be seen, this approach enables the standard CDN functions and features to be leveraged, thus providing end users (including those on both fixed line and non-fixed-line networks, and irrespective of application type) both the benefits of deduplication as well as those afforded by overlay networking technologies. In this alternative approach, if the peer does not have the block associated with a given fingerprint, the peer makes a request back to the sending agent to request it. In one embodiment, each block has a particular URI associated therewith, such as a magnet-style URI. A magnet URI refers to a resource available for download via a description of its content in a reduced form (e.g., a cryptographic hash value of the content). An alternative to using a magnet URI is to have a decoding (receiving or child) peer make a request back up to the encoding (sending or parent) peer (or peer region) and request the raw data for whatever chunk is not then available to the decoding peer for decode—using some agreed-upon protocol. Preferably, the processing of data on the decoder side is very fast, and thus a missing chunk is detected and a request sent back to the encoder within some small processing overhead time. 
         [0036]    Preferably, special care is taken to avoid extraneous round trips back to the sending peer for blocks that are missing. Therefore, in one embodiment, files that are very small and they are sent, e.g., in one initial congestion window (CWND), are not deduplicated, as the risk of a block cache miss is greater than the payout when the block exists at the receiving peer. This is because the serialization delay into a network I/O card is significantly smaller than the latency that might occur on a cache miss. Thus, preferably only those responses where there is a statistical probability of any advantage using deduplication (even in the face of possible extra latency due to missing blocks) should be considered. 
         [0037]    Thus, according to this disclosure, the deduplication system uses an on-demand cache synchronization protocol, which may involve peers communicating with each other explicitly, and that involves a peer making certain assumptions about what another peer might have, or otherwise. According to this protocol, there is an assumption that the decoding peer has a given block of data if the local encoding peer already has it, and an assumption that the decoding peer entity does not have the given block of data if the local encoding peer does not. Further, the system accounts for a mismatch in caches between peers. If this occurs, the mismatch is resolved. To this end, whenever some data (an object, a chunk, a set of chunks, etc. that have been seen in a stream) is not available for decode, the decoding peer makes a request back up to the encoding peer (or region of peers) and requests the raw data needed. As noted above, the processing of data on the decoder side is very fast and thus the missing data is detected and a request sent back to the encoder within only a small processing overhead time. This approach ensures that, irrespective of what cache synchronization protocol is being utilized, there is a fallback mechanism to ensure that a transaction can complete. The missing data support thus handles the possibility of complete cache misses, and it can be used in conjunction with the cache synchronization approach described above. 
         [0038]    A representative architecture for implementing a deduplication approach of this type is shown in  FIG. 5 . For simplicity, a client  500  is shown interacting with an edge GHost process  502 , which in turn communicates (typically over a WAN) with a forward GHost process  504  located near a tenant origin  506 . Each GHost process  502  and  504  has associated therewith a deduplication engine  508 , an associated data store for the dictionary, and other related processes. Collectively, these elements are sometimes referred to as a dedupe module. The cache parent may also implement other technologies, such as front end optimization (FEO). GHost communicates with the deduplication module over some interface. In an alternative embodiment, the deduplication functionality is implemented in GHost natively. When a request for origin content arrives from process  502 , the request is routed through the cache parent  504  for the origin. The cache parent  504  retrieves the content (perhaps from the origin) and then performs a traditional dedupe operation, using its dedupe engine  508 . In particular, the cache parent first looks into its library and sees if it can compress the object by replacing chunks of bytes that it has already seen with the names that have already been assigned for those chunks. Preferably, a library is shared among multiple CDN customers; in an alternative embodiment, a library is specific to a particular origin. The cache parent  504  then sends the compressed object to edge server process  502 , where it is processed by the edge server dedupe engine  508 . Outside of this delivery loop, however, the dedupe cache parent  504  also processes the object to store newly-seen chunks of bytes, entering the new chunks into its library. When the compressed stream is received at the edge server process  502 , the edge server processes the compressed object by looking for chunks that were replaced by names (or “fingerprints”), and then retrieving the original chunks using the name. 
         [0039]    A more specific embodiment is shown in  FIG. 6 . In this scenario, an end user  600  has been associated with an edge server machine  602  via overlay network DNS in the usual manner. An “end user” is a web browser user agent executing on a client machine (e.g., desktop, laptop, mobile device, tablet computer, or the like) or mobile application (app) executing on such a device. An “end user” communicates with the edge server machine via HTTP or HTTPS, and such communications may traverse other networks, systems, and devices. Edge server machine executes a metadata-configurable web proxy process (GHost)  604  managed by the overlay network provider, and an associated stream-based data deduplication process  606 . As will be described, the dedupe process theoretically performs data compression on all blocks from all files from all CDN customers. In this approach, pieces of a file from a different URI may be used to perform deduplication, as well as pieces from multiple files at the same time. The edge server machine  602  may be a “child” to one or more “parent” nodes, such as a parent GHost process  608  executing on another overlay server appliance (not shown). In this example, GHost process  608  is a “pass-through” and does not provide differencing functionality; it may be omitted. 
         [0040]    As also seen in  FIG. 6 , requests from the client side are directed to an “origin” server  612 . The origin (or target) server  612  is a server that typically executes in an overlay network customer infrastructure (or perhaps some other hosted environment, such as a third party cloud-based infrastructure). Typically, origin server  612  provides a web-based front-end to a web site or web-accessible customer application that is desired to be accelerated using the overlay network infrastructure. In this example scenario, which is not intended to be limiting, the origin server  612  executes in the customer&#39;s own private network  614 . Customer private network  614  includes a physical machine  615 . That machine (or some other machine in the customer network) may support another web proxy process  618 , and an associated dedupe process  620 . Web proxy  618  need not be metadata-configurable, nor does it need to be managed actively by the overlay network. The architecture shown above is not intended to be limiting, but rather is provided as just an example. 
         [0041]    The following is a description of an end-to-end flow. In this scenario, and as noted above, “GHost” refers to a metadata-configurable web proxy process executing on an edge appliance in an overlay network, “ATS” refers to an overlay network web proxy process executing on an appliance within a customer network or infrastructure but distinct from the overlay network, and the de-dupe process can perform de-duplication with respect to all blocks from all files local to the specific customer&#39;s network (in this example embodiment). As noted above, and depending on the network architecture employed, a library may also be shared so that the associated de-dupe process can perform de-duplication with respect to all blocks from all (or some number of the) overlay network customers. In the illustrated embodiment, a GHost (or ATS) process as the case may be communicates with an associated dedupe process via an interface (e.g., localhost). 
         [0042]    In a representative (but non-limiting) implementation as shown in  FIG. 6 , the overlay network provider provides software that runs within a customer&#39;s infrastructure (the private network), e.g., as a virtual machine (VM) or “edge appliance.” The edge appliance  610  preferably is located either in the DMZ or behind an enterprise firewall and it may execute on a hypervisor (e.g., VMware ESXi (v. 4.0+))  616  supported and managed by the overlay network customer. In one preferred embodiment, the edge appliance is distributed as a 64-bit virtual appliance downloaded via an overlay network customer portal (extranet). Each edge appliance requires at least one publically routable IP address and may be configured by the overlay network, preferably over a secure connection. 
         [0043]    Thus, according to the above approach, at least one server associated with a tenant origin is equipped (or associated) with a dedupe engine. When a request comes for content from an edge server, the request is routed through a dedupe cache parent for the origin. The cache parent retrieves the content (perhaps from origin) and then, depending on the content size and any applicable configuration parameters, performs deduplication. If deduplication occurs, the parent cache examines its dictionary; if it can compress the object (by replacing chunks of bytes that it has already seen with the names that have already been assigned for those chunks), it does so. The cache parent then sends the compressed object to the edge server. Separately, the dedupe cache parent processes the object to store newly-seen chunks of bytes, entering them into the library that it maintains. When the compressed object is received at the edge server, as described above, the edge server processes the compressed object by looking for chunks that were replaced by names and then retrieving the original chunks using the names, as has been described. 
         [0044]    Generalizing, according to this disclosure, as a stream goes through/traverses a parent node, the parent node breaks the stream into chunks. For every chunk, the parent then makes what is, in effect, a “guess” regarding whether the child node to which the stream is being sent has that chunk. The “guess” may be informed in any way, e.g., it may be statistical, probabilistic, based on some heuristic, be derived based on executing an algorithm, be based on the relative location of the child, be based on load, latency, packet loss, or other data, or be determined in some other manner. If the parent&#39;s belief is that the child does not have the chunk already, it sends the actual data. If, however, the parent&#39;s belief is that the child likely has the chunk, then the parent just sends the name/fingerprint. As the child gets the encoded stream and begins to decode the stream, for every chunk reference/name, the child then looks up the name in its own local library/dictionary. If the chunk is there, the child re-expands it. If, however, the chunk is not present, the child performs an on-demand request (e.g., to the encoding peer/region) requesting the actual data for the chunk. 
         [0045]    With this approach, all the known benefits of a CDN (e.g., load balancing, caching, WAN acceleration, and so forth) are leveraged. Importantly, the edge server does not need to maintain a symmetric library for the origin. Of course, the edge server might well have the chunks in cache but, if it does not, it follows the usual CDN-like procedure to retrieve them (e.g., through a cache hierarchy or the like), ultimately retrieving them from the dedupe cache parent if necessary. 
         [0046]    The GHost process has the capability of determining whether a request is to be handled by the deduplication process. One technique for making this determination uses tenant-specific metadata and the technique described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,240,100. 
         [0047]    The dedupe module may run as a buddy process or an in-process library with respect to GHost. The communication mechanism between GHost and the module may be over shared memory, localhost, TCP, UDS, or the like. In an alternative embodiment, the client-side dedupe module itself may be placed directly on a client device, such as an end user client (EUC) network machine, a mobile device handset, or the like. 
         [0048]    Preferably, whether dedupe is turned on may be controlled by metadata configurations, preferably on a per-tenant basis. 
         [0049]    As noted above, preferably the dedupe mechanism is not invoked for files that are too small. Small object aversion support thus provides a way to intelligently avoid performing otherwise risky deduplication operations that might incur an extra RTT on a cache miss. In one approach, this may be accomplished by having GHost bypass the dedupe operation for POSTs and responses that include a “Content-Length” header under a certain threshold. Most dynamic content, however, uses chunked transfer encoding, which means that the size of the object is not known in advance. Thus, absent some determination to avoid deduplication based on other criteria, GHost should pass the request through the mechanism described. 
         [0050]    In addition, preferably the fingerprint is only sent when there is good assurance that the other side may have the data. Thus, preferably the fingerprint is only sent if the block was seen in the same stream. 
         [0051]    Some file formats (like Huffman encoding) are heavily compressed as well as jumbled. Commercial deduplication systems often offer systems within their deduplication engines to decode those file types into more deduplication-friendly formats prior to performing fingerprinting and chunking. Such approaches may be implemented herein as well. In particular, each side (whether in GHost or in the dedupe module itself) may implement per file format decompression filters to better ensure cached block hits. 
         [0052]    The GHost/dedupe module solution described herein may also interoperate with protocol terminators. Protocol terminators are pieces of software that terminate a protocol (such as CIFS or MAPI) and convert it, e.g., to http or http(s). 
         [0053]    The dedupe module may interoperate with other CDN mechanisms, such as FEO techniques. 
         [0054]    As shown in  FIG. 6 ,  1  dedupe module as described herein may be located within an enterprise network, such as in a machine associated with the overlay network that is located in an enterprise DMZ. 
         [0055]    As also shown in  FIG. 6 , a dedupe module as described herein may be located within a virtual machine (VM) associated with an enterprise that uses or interoperates with the overlay network. This architecture is not a limitation, however, as the forward proxy need not be positioned within an enterprise (or other customer private network). 
         [0056]    The dedupe techniques described herein may be used in association with one or more other CDN service offerings, to facilitate CDN node-to-node communications (in-network deduplication), or the like. 
         [0057]    The GHost and dedupe modules are implemented in software, executed in one or more processors, as a specialized machine. 
         [0058]    There is no limitation on the type of data that may be processed by the described technique. Indeed, for certain data types (such as PII), data deduplication such as described herein has significant advantages over caching alone. 
         [0059]    The dedupe function may be implemented in a daemon process, namely, as a set of computer program instructions executed by a hardware processor. The daemon may function as both the client and the server in the HTTP-based protocol described above. Preferably, it is shunted into or onto the servers (e.g., GHost) at the ends of a high latency leg of communication within an overlay network. As described above, preferably metadata configuration data determines whether a particular request (on the sending side of the connection) should be considered a request that should be accelerated using the protocol. 
         [0060]    In general, the approach described herein enables the overlay servers to remove redundant data it is sending between peers on the network, instead sending much smaller fingerprints. This reduces the overall size of the data on the wire drastically for transactions that have high amounts of duplicate data, thus reducing the amount of time for delivery to the end user. In addition, the reduced data results in lowered operating costs on the network as the amount of information transferred and the bandwidth requires decreases. 
         [0061]    The above-described approach is highly scalable, and it works for any type of content, and over any type of network. The client is a conventional desktop, laptop or other Internet-accessible machine running a web browser or other rendering engine (such as a mobile app). The client may also be a mobile device. As used herein, a mobile device is any wireless client device, e.g., a cellphone, pager, a personal digital assistant (PDA, e.g., with GPRS NIC), a mobile computer with a smartphone client, or the like. Other mobile devices in which the technique may be practiced include any access protocol-enabled device (e.g., iOS™-based device, an Android™-based device, or the like) that is capable of sending and receiving data in a wireless manner using a wireless protocol. Typical wireless protocols are: WiFi, GSM/GPRS, CDMA or WiMax. These protocols implement the ISO/OSI Physical and Data Link layers (Layers 1 &amp; 2) upon which a traditional networking stack is built, complete with IP, TCP, SSL/TLS and HTTP. In a representative embodiment, the mobile device is a cellular telephone that operates over GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), which is a data technology for GSM networks. A mobile device as used herein may be a 3G- (or next generation) compliant device that includes a subscriber identity module (SIM), which is a smart card that carries subscriber-specific information, mobile equipment (e.g., radio and associated signal processing devices), a man-machine interface (MMI), and one or more interfaces to external devices (e.g., computers, PDAs, and the like). The techniques disclosed herein are not limited for use with a mobile device that uses a particular access protocol. The mobile device typically also has support for wireless local area network (WLAN) technologies, such as Wi-Fi. WLAN is based on IEEE 802.11 standards. 
         [0062]    More generally, the techniques described herein are provided using a set of one or more computing-related entities (systems, machines, processes, programs, libraries, functions, or the like) that together facilitate or provide the described functionality described above. In a typical implementation, a representative machine on which the software executes comprises commodity hardware, an operating system, an application runtime environment, and a set of applications or processes and associated data, that provide the functionality of a given system or subsystem. As described, the functionality may be implemented in a standalone machine, or across a distributed set of machines. The functionality may be provided as a service, e.g., as a SaaS solution. 
         [0063]    While the above describes a particular order of operations performed by certain embodiments of the invention, it should be understood that such order is exemplary, as alternative embodiments may perform the operations in a different order, combine certain operations, overlap certain operations, or the like. References in the specification to a given embodiment indicate that the embodiment described may include a particular feature, structure, or characteristic, but every embodiment may not necessarily include the particular feature, structure, or characteristic. 
         [0064]    While the disclosed subject matter has been described in the context of a method or process, the subject disclosure also relates to apparatus for performing the operations herein. This apparatus may be specially constructed for the required purposes, or it may comprise a general-purpose computer selectively activated or reconfigured by a computer program stored in the computer. Such a computer program may be stored in a computer readable storage medium, such as, but is not limited to, any type of disk including an optical disk, a CD-ROM, and a magnetic-optical disk, a read-only memory (ROM), a random access memory (RAM), a magnetic or optical card, or any type of media suitable for storing electronic instructions, and each coupled to a computer system bus. 
         [0065]    While given components of the system have been described separately, one of ordinary skill will appreciate that some of the functions may be combined or shared in given instructions, program sequences, code portions, and the like. 
         [0066]    Preferably, the functionality is implemented in an application layer solution, although this is not a limitation, as portions of the identified functions may be built into an operating system or the like. 
         [0067]    The functionality may be implemented with other application layer protocols besides HTTPS, such as SSL VPN, or any other protocol having similar operating characteristics. 
         [0068]    There is no limitation on the type of computing entity that may implement the client-side or server-side of the connection. Any computing entity (system, machine, device, program, process, utility, or the like) may act as the client or the server.