Patent Description:
High Throughput Satellite (HTS) systems are capable of delivering over <NUM> Mbps throughput from a ground station to end user terminal; however, the minimum packet round trip latency for a geosynchronous satellite system is at least <NUM> milliseconds. Despite the high availability, broad coverage, and high throughput, secure webpage and highly interactive traffic load times over satellite tends to be longer compared to lower throughput, lower latency terrestrial systems due to the long round trip delay over satellite and the number of round-trip connections needed in modern end user applications.

In basic multiple transport implementations, routers have fixed routes and load balancing for traffic. When traffic switches over, existing connections are cut and need to be re-established as the IP path routing has changed. Also, user traffic does not take advantage of both transports and their relative benefits. <CIT> relates to a method and system for a first node to transmit packets to a second node, involving receiving a packet from a local area network (LAN) interface, inspecting the packet; determining whether the packet satisfies at least one packet condition; transmitting the packet through a predefined tunnel if the packet satisfies the at least one packet condition; transmitting the packet through a second tunnel if the packet does not satisfy the at least one packet condition. The predefined tunnel, the second tunnel and other tunnels may together form an aggregated connection. The use of predefined tunnel may be based on whether the packets satisfy a session condition. <CIT> relates to multiple broadband connections operate together to provide a highly available secure private networking solution. Data packets of a communications flow are received by a networking device, for transmission to a remote destination node, over a wide area data communications network. A service classification is determined for the data flow. A sequence number is generated for each data packet, where the sequence numbers indicate an order by which the data packets are received. An indication of the service classification and the sequence number is added to each data packet. For each data packet, a transport policy is determined that indicates one or more VPN tunnels through which the data packet is to be transmitted, where the determination of the VPN tunnels is based on the service classification, and wherein each VPN tunnel is carried over a respective WAN transport of the wide area data network. <CIT> relates to a wireless communication network and wireless communication method. The network has a plurality of transceivers forming a wireless communication network in which the plurality of transceivers include one or more central nodes and each end node capable of connecting to the one or more central nodes and forming a link. At least some of the transceivers of the network having a plurality of antennas and an array processing element coupled to the plurality of antennas and at least some of the transceivers are housed in an aerial communication node that may be a mini-satellite, a balloon or a drone.

This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that is further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter, that it is defined by the claims.

The present teachings use an accelerator as disclosed in claim <NUM>, two or more Wide Area Networks (WANs) including a high throughput, high latency satellite transport and a low latency transport, and a peer accelerator.

A system of one or more computers can be configured according to claim <NUM> to perform particular operations or actions by virtue of having software, firmware, hardware, or a combination of them installed on the system that in operation causes or cause the system to perform the actions.

In order to describe the manner in which the above-recited and other advantages and features may be obtained, a more particular description is provided below and will be rendered by reference to specific embodiments thereof which are illustrated in the appended drawings.

The present teachings are directed to leveraging a lower latency, lower throughput terrestrial transport like a wireless cellular network in conjunction with higher throughput, higher latency satellite to create a combined end user low latency and high throughput transport.

The present teachings may be a system, a method, and/or a computer program product at any possible technical detail level of integration.

Computer readable program instructions for carrying out operations of the present invention may be assembler instructions, instruction-set-architecture (ISA) instructions, machine instructions, machine dependent instructions, microcode, firmware instructions, state-setting data, or either source code or object code written in any combination of one or more programming languages, including an object oriented programming language such as SMALLTALK, C++ or the like, and conventional procedural programming languages, such as the "C" programming language or similar programming languages. In the latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through any type of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), or the tunnel may be made to an external computer (for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider). In some embodiments, electronic circuitry including, for example, programmable logic circuitry, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), or programmable logic arrays (PLA) may execute the computer readable program instructions by utilizing state information of the computer readable program instructions.

Reference in the specification to "one embodiment" or "an embodiment" of the present invention, as well as other variations thereof, means that a feature, structure, characteristic, and so forth described in connection with the embodiment is included in at least one embodiment of the present invention. Thus, the appearances of the phrase "in one embodiment" or "in an embodiment", as well any other variations, appearing in various places throughout the specification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment.

A high-bandwidth satellite system has significant advantages including high throughput, a satellite capable of <NUM>+ Gbps switch capability, end user terminals of speeds upwards of <NUM>+ Mbps, and large coverage. Furthermore, only three (<NUM>) geosynchronous satellites can cover the majority of the entire planet while using reduced ground infrastructure compared to an alternative network of similar coverage. However, high altitude orbiting like geosynchronous orbiting satellite systems suffer from one key disadvantage, namely, latency. Propagation delay to a geosynchronous orbiting satellite at <NUM>,<NUM> above the earth is a minimum of <NUM>. The propagation delay can be problematic for interactive traffic and secure web-browsing requiring multiple round trips, resulting in long access and load times.

Alternate communication systems, for example, cellular and wireline, have the opposite concern. Alternate communication systems generally have low latency, as low as a few milliseconds, to an internet gateway. While capable of very high bandwidth <NUM>+ Mbps to the end consumer, alternate communication systems suffer from capacity limitation and congestion in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Moreover, significant ground infrastructure is needed for service coverage and not all customers can be serviced with equal quality of service. Moreover, guaranteed quality of service is extremely expensive and not affordable for the typical underserved consumer with alternate communication systems.

To consider a low latency transport for diversity and acceleration, the low latency transport has a lower average round trip when compared to the high latency satellite transport. And the larger the difference in latency, the greater the benefit of using the low latency transport to accelerate the high latency satellite transport. For example, the disparity between a GEO transport (~<NUM> RTT) and a <NUM> cellular (-<NUM>-<NUM> RTT) is very significant. In exemplary embodiments, disparity between high latency transports and low latency transports is about <NUM> or greater, or about <NUM> or greater.

By supplementing a high latency satellite system with a low latency diversity transport, a combined optimized and redundant transport benefiting from high throughput, high availability and low latency is achieved. To achieve this, the present teachings disclose integration of two disparate communication systems for a seamless and fast transport service. A subscriber, a user equipment or an application are unaware that their packets are traversing more than one transport and perceives the characteristics of the combined transport only. Without the integration, standalone high latency satellite and alternate transport service exhibits a poor user experience.

<FIG> illustrates a combined low-latency high throughput system, according to various embodiments.

A combined low latency high throughput system <NUM> may combine a high-latency high-throughput transport like a satellite transport <NUM> with a low-latency low-throughput transport like a cellular transport <NUM> or a wireline transport <NUM> to provide networks services to a subscriber. A subscriber's UE <NUM> may be disposed on a LAN <NUM>. A Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) <NUM> may be connected to the LAN <NUM>. The UE <NUM> may request services from a host <NUM> connected to a private LAN <NUM>. The host <NUM> and private LAN <NUM> may be reachable via the public Internet <NUM>. The system <NUM> may include a Point of Presence (PoP)<NUM>. The system <NUM> may include a management network <NUM>.

The CPE <NUM> may include an accelerator <NUM>, a satellite modem <NUM>, a cellular modem <NUM> and a wireline modem <NUM>. The accelerator <NUM> may be connected to the LAN <NUM> that provides connectivity to the UE <NUM>. The satellite modem <NUM> provides the satellite transport <NUM>. The cellular modem <NUM> provides the cellular transport <NUM>. The wireline modem <NUM> provides the wireline transport <NUM>. In some embodiments, only one of the cellular transport <NUM> or the wireline transport <NUM> are provided. The cellular transport <NUM> or the wireline transport <NUM>, singly or in combination, may provide the low latency transport. In some embodiments, a wireless transport (not shown) may be provided as a low latency transport. The accelerator <NUM> may concurrently use one or more of the satellite transport <NUM>, the cellular transport <NUM> or the wireline transport <NUM>. The satellite modem <NUM> may connect to a feeder station <NUM> via a satellite (not shown) to access the satellite transport <NUM>. The cellular modem <NUM> may connect to a cellular base station <NUM> to access the cellular transport <NUM>. The wireline modem <NUM> may connect to a wireline ISP <NUM> to access the wireline transport <NUM>. The feeder station <NUM>, the cellular base station <NUM> and the wireline ISP <NUM> may be connected to the public Internet <NUM>.

The feeder station <NUM>, the cellular base station <NUM> and the wireline ISP <NUM> may use the public Internet <NUM> to communicate with a PoP <NUM>. In some embodiments the PoP <NUM> may be co-located with one or more of the feeder station <NUM>, the cellular base station <NUM> and the wireline ISP <NUM> and as such traffic to the PoP <NUM> need not traverse the public Internet <NUM>. The PoP <NUM> may optionally include a Virtual Private Network (VPN) firewall <NUM>, an enterprise router <NUM> and a peer accelerator <NUM>. The enterprise router <NUM> may connect the peer accelerator <NUM> to a host <NUM> optionally via a private LAN <NUM>. All traffic to and from the PoP <NUM>, and in particular the peer accelerator <NUM>, may traverse the VPN firewall <NUM>. The management network <NUM> may include a VPN firewall <NUM>, an EMS <NUM>, a database <NUM> and a service <NUM>.

The accelerator <NUM> connects to the peer accelerator <NUM> via each of the WAN transports (<NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM>) available, for example, a peer to peer tunnel <NUM> (satellite tunnel) via the satellite transport <NUM>, a peer to peer tunnel <NUM> (low latency tunnel) via the cellular transport <NUM>, and a peer to peer tunnel <NUM> (low latency tunnel) via the wireline transport <NUM>. The peer to peer tunnels <NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM> may be simplex (conveying packets in only one direction) or duplex (conveying packets in both directions). The accelerator <NUM> provides a combined transport <NUM> usable by a UE <NUM> of the LAN <NUM>. The accelerator <NUM> may use the combined transport <NUM> to communicate with the host <NUM> using one or more of the peer to peer tunnels. The selection of the peer to peer tunnel and by extension the corresponding transport to transport a packet is based on increasing throughput and decreasing latency after a packet's inspection as described herein. Similar to the accelerator <NUM>, the peer accelerator <NUM> presents a combined transport (not shown) to the host <NUM>. The combined transport from the peer accelerator <NUM> to the accelerator <NUM> combines the peer to peer tunnels <NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM> to increase packet transport throughput and decrease latency after a packet inspection at the peer accelerator <NUM>. In some embodiments, each of the peer to peer tunnels <NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM> may span multiple transports, for example, multiple satellite transport connections or multiple cellular transport connections. The multiple transports may be used to further segregate the network traffic, for example, one transport per priority level, per QoS level, or the like.

The accelerator <NUM> and peer accelerator <NUM> transport a packet by performing IP flow inspection and classification of the packet; performance monitoring of the WAN transports (<NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM>); managing peer-to-peer tunnels <NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM>; availability of a PoP <NUM> hosting the peer accelerator <NUM>; and routing the packet using a preferred transport selected from the satellite transport <NUM>, the cellular transport <NUM> or the wireline transport <NUM>. In some embodiments, the peer-to-peer tunnels <NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM> may use an unsecure or secure tunnel over the public Internet <NUM>. In some embodiments, the peer-to-peer tunnels <NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM> may use communication tunnels established between the CPE <NUM> hosting the accelerator <NUM> and the PoP <NUM> hosting the peer accelerator <NUM> using tunneling protocols such as GRE, IPSec, L2TP, SSL or the like. The tunnels may be provided a VPN firewall (not shown) at the CPE <NUM> and the optional VPN firewall <NUM> of the PoP <NUM>.

Network traffic from the UE <NUM> to the host <NUM> is treated as upstream traffic <NUM> and is received by the accelerator <NUM> via the combined transport <NUM>. The accelerator <NUM> sends the downstream traffic <NUM> via the one or more peer-to-peer tunnels <NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM> to the peer accelerator <NUM> for delivery to the host <NUM>.

Network traffic from the host <NUM> to the UE <NUM> is treated as downstream traffic <NUM> and is received by the peer accelerator <NUM> via from the host <NUM>. The peer accelerator <NUM> sends the upstream traffic <NUM> via the one or more peer-to-peer tunnels <NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM> to the accelerator <NUM> for delivery to the UE <NUM> via the combined transport <NUM>.

Multiple types of redundant connectivity and scalability may be achieved. For example, the first type of redundant connectivity and scalability is provided by the availability of multiple transports between the CPE <NUM> and the PoP <NUM>. With the multiple transports, the accelerator may transmit packets from the same IP flow over more than one transport (back to back or in parallel) to increase redundancy. However, due to the varying latencies of the transports, packets arrive at different times at the receiving peer. The accelerator peer may restore the order of the packets and discard duplicates as needed.

A second type of redundant connectivity and scalability may be achieved through the availability of multiple PoPs <NUM> where the acceleration client <NUM> may automatically handoff between the PoPs <NUM> in case of a PoP outage, peer gateway outage, congestion or the like. The PoPs <NUM> may be instantiated on physical, virtual, or cloud-based hardware. The CPE <NUM> may be a single or multiple component solution including the accelerator <NUM>, a tunneling client (for example a VPN firewall, not shown), and transport modems including the satellite modem <NUM>, the cellular modem <NUM> and the wireline modem <NUM>.

To integrate standalone high latency satellite and low latency transport networks, the present teachings disclose an accelerator and a peer accelerator. The accelerator and the peer accelerator may be mirror devices and processing occurring in the accelerator also occurs in the peer accelerator. The accelerator and peer accelerator are network peers. In the present teachings, traffic between a user device and a host is conveyed through tunnels established between the accelerator and the peer accelerator.

These two peer accelerators establish a peer-to-peer tunnel over each WAN transport to form a private acceleration network or combined transport. At least one of the accelerator or the peer accelerator may be hosted by a PoP. The accelerators may use one or more custom or standard tunneling protocols like GRE, IPSec, SSL, L2TP, etc. for the tunnels. Selected tunneling protocol may depend on criteria like security, overhead, and reliability. Multiple peer tunnels between two endpoints may be used to create redundancy and allow packets over either tunnel. Packet routing can select between the WAN transports to route user traffic based on associated transport characteristics and packet QoS without end user impact. At least a portion of the two types of accelerators may be in common in its implementation, for example, the accelerator of <FIG>. In some embodiments, the peer accelerator may be a gateway, for example an accelerator gateway that is more scalable than an accelerator. The accelerator gateway may be deployed at a feeder station, cellular base station, a PoP or the like.

<FIG> illustrates an exemplary accelerator according to various embodiments.

An accelerator <NUM> may include a tunnel manager <NUM>, a sender <NUM> and a receiver <NUM>. The tunnel manager <NUM> may establish connectivity over the available transports. The tunnel manager <NUM> may reestablish connectivity when needed as per transport availability. The tunnel manager <NUM> may monitor performance of the connected transports and reestablish connectivity when needed. The tunnel manager <NUM> may monitor performance of the peer accelerator being communicated with. The tunnel manager <NUM> may track various transport metrics for the transports being used by the accelerator <NUM>. The various transport metrics may be used in selecting a preferred transport to convey a packet. Exemplary transport metrics include current latency, congestion, throughput and transport cost for a packet.

In some embodiments, the tunnel manager <NUM> monitors the WAN transports to determine each WAN transport's status, and to detect packet loss and anomalies. The accelerators may probe and calculate transport characteristics to estimate throughput, latency, and jitter. In some embodiments, a transport selector <NUM> takes this information into account when determining a packet's transport route. The accelerators may track a private accelerator network status, maintain tunnels to the peer network accelerator or its alternatives. In some embodiments, alternate accelerators may be located at different geographic locations across different servers. When a primary accelerator tunnel drops, the accelerator may immediately handover the traffic to an alternate accelerator. The locations of accelerator networks may be chosen to optimize user service.

The sender <NUM> may send a packet via the preferred transport. The sender <NUM> may include an inspector <NUM>, the transport selector <NUM> and a PEP splitter <NUM>. The inspector <NUM> may inspect and classify each packet based on its characteristics at the L2/L3/L4 protocol layers. The classification may perform deep packet inspection and/or machine learning to determine an application payload. Classification determines packet QoS. In some embodiments, classification may occur upon reception for improved feedback and adaptation. After the inspection and classification, the inspector <NUM> may provide classification metrics for the packet. Exemplary classification metrics may indicate whether the packet is, for example, critical application traffic, interactive traffic, bulk traffic, real-time traffic, requiring a quality of service, within a startup period of a traffic floor session, voice traffic or the like. Some examples of common interactive traffic would be TCP session management, TLS handshakes, and DNS lookups. Some examples of common bulk traffic would be file transfers or streaming video. The start-up period can be optimized and customized for varying traffic profiles and end user applications.

The transport selector <NUM> may apply multiple preferred routing protocols and techniques to determine or select a preferred transport for each packet based on the classification and transport metrics that may be provided by the tunnel manager <NUM>. In some embodiments, the transport selector <NUM> may direct interactive traffic over the low latency transport (for example, a cellular network, a wireline network) and bulky traffic over a high latency high-throughput network (for example, a high latency satellite network). In some embodiments, the transport selector <NUM> may initiate a sending of traffic over the low latency transport while queuing up transmission over the satellite transport to hide propagation delay for the same IP flow. The hiding of the propagation delay effectively provides a better user experience. In some embodiments, the transport selector <NUM> may direct duplication of critical packets over both WAN transports to provide increased redundancy and reliability.

The Performance Enhancing Proxy (PEP) splitter <NUM> provides termination of an IP flow's original protocol needed to complete the PEP handling of the downstream packet. For TCP this includes terminating the TCP protocol, buffering out of sequence packets and sending acknowledgement.

The receiver <NUM> may include a buffer <NUM>, a reorder module <NUM>, a combine module <NUM>, and a PEP restore module <NUM>. In some embodiments the receiver <NUM> performs one or more of the necessary packet buffering with the buffer <NUM>, re-ordering with the reorder module <NUM>, and combining with the combine module <NUM> prior to routing the packet traffic to a data endpoint. When duplicated packets are received, the receiver <NUM> performs the necessary packet buffering with the buffer <NUM>, re-ordering with the reorder module <NUM>, and combining with the combine module <NUM> prior to routing the duplicated traffic. The PEP restore module <NUM> restores the original protocol and, in particular, is responsible for the retransmission of TCP data segments that are lost between the accelerator and a PEP endpoint.

<FIG> illustrates a process for accelerating network traffic over multiple transports according to various embodiments.

A process <NUM> for accelerating network traffic may include an operation <NUM> to send a packet over a combined transport and an operation <NUM> to receive a packet over the combined transport.

Operation <NUM> may include an operation <NUM> to receive a packet from a network interface. Operation <NUM> may include an operation <NUM> to classify the packet and determine which IP flow the packet is part of. The network interface of operation <NUM> may be an interface other than the interfaces used to communicate with various WAN transports combined to form the combined transport. Operation <NUM> may include an operation <NUM> to PEP the packet by "splitting" the tunnel. Operation <NUM> may include an operation <NUM> to determine which WAN transport of the combined transport should carry the packet's data and whether the packet's data should be sent over multiple WAN transports. Operation <NUM> may include an operation <NUM> to send the packet's data over the selected WANs in the fashion that is well-suited to the WAN.

Operation <NUM> may include an operation <NUM> to receive the packet from one of the WAN transports of the combined transport. Operation <NUM> may include an operation <NUM> to determine which IP flow the packet is part of. Operation <NUM> may include an operation <NUM> to hold the packet's data if it is not in-sequence in a re-sequence queue. Operation <NUM> may include an operation <NUM> to discard the packet data if it was already received. Operation <NUM> may include an operation <NUM> to forward the packet data in-sequence when available, using the PEP to restore the flow's original protocol. Operation <NUM> may include an operation <NUM> to forward buffered out-of-sequence data when the original protocol can support the loss of data and the arrival of the missing in sequence data is no longer expected (perhaps because of how long the data has been buffered).

On the customer premises acceleration of traffic may be provided using a satellite access modem to provide connectivity to a high throughput satellite communications network, a cellular modem (or another low latency transport modem) to provide connectivity to a low latency communication network and an accelerator client to perform the accelerator functions. A customer premise may be the actual customer premise (for example, store or residence), or may be a shared WAN transport facility (for example, a single satellite terminal supporting end-user devices across a campus, small town, or the like). An exemplary CPE <NUM> is illustrated in <FIG>. Wireless connectivity is convenient to pair with satellite wireless in areas of minimal ground infrastructure.

In some embodiments, the accelerator client executes on a host processor and OS. The accelerator client may contain multiple instantiations of a client process to establish peer-to-peer tunnel to the accelerator gateway and to perform packet classification for incoming traffic from a customer LAN. The transport server client may be hardware accelerated. The accelerator client may also use machine learning or deep packet inspection to assist with classification. The accelerator client may execute routing and acceleration algorithms. The accelerator client may have a networking stack and/or a security firewall. The entire client or components of the accelerator client may execute in a virtual environment such as a virtual machine or container running on the host.

The CPE may be provided as a standalone, transport integrated, hybrid integrated, or fully integrated single device solution. In the standalone configuration all WAN modems and accelerator client are provided as standalone devices. For example, each of the accelerator <NUM>, the satellite modem <NUM>, the cellular modem <NUM> and the wireline modem <NUM> may be provided in a standalone device. In the transport integrated configuration, the modems may be integrated into a combined transport modem and the accelerator client may be provided in an external standalone configuration. For example, the satellite modem <NUM>, the cellular modem <NUM> and the wireline modem <NUM> may be provided in a standalone device, while the accelerator client provided in a different standalone device. In a fully integrated configuration all modems, router, and accelerator client are integrated together in a single standalone device. Lastly in a hybrid integration, any combination of the above (i.e. <NUM> modems, router, accelerator client integrated with external <NUM>rd WAN transport) may be provided a standalone device. The CPE may include a VPN firewall to support a tunnel between the CPE and the PoP.

The Point of presence (PoP) or Network Operation Center (NOC) is the network side component, for example, the PoP <NUM> of <FIG>. Multiple PoPs may be instantiated for load balancing and scaling to load. The location of the PoP may be strategic to optimize transport characteristics such as, latency, jitter, throughput, etc. The PoP may include VPN firewalls to block unwanted intrusion or malicious software/connections. The PoP may serve as an endpoint to additional VPN tunnels. Multiple VPN firewalls may be desired for scalability and load balancing. The PoP may include one or more enterprise routers to route traffic between the accelerator gateway and the public internet. Routers may route traffic to private networks such as network. Multiple routers may exist for scaling and load balancing.

A PoP may be instantiated on physical hardware or virtualized on a data center or network server. PoP virtualization enables scalability and may lower infrastructure costs. PoPs may also provide other services for management, diagnostics and the like.

Transports, for example, geosynchronous satellite transports, may employ a Performance Enhancing Proxy (PEP) to mitigate the impact of latencies (for example, due to relaying a signal via a satellite) on performance. This is done primarily for the TCP protocol but can be employed with other protocols. With PEP, the accelerator and peer acceleration each split the tunnel by terminating the proxied protocol and then sending the data content in a packet tuned to well-match the WAN's characteristics and reduce, where practical, overhead data such as acknowledgements. PEP may restore the TCP connection at the far end of the WAN so that the original flow(s) of data are delivered unmodified to the two endpoints of the PEP'ed protocol connection. In some embodiments, a split-tunnel PEP is used. In the split-tunnel PEP, the peer accelerator receives a PEP'ed tunnel's upstream data potentially across one or more of the WAN transports in use and restores the original data stream (flow) to deliver it unmodified to the upstream tunnel endpoint. Similarly, the accelerator receives a PEP'ed tunnel's downstream data across potentially both one or more of the WAN transports and restores the original data stream to deliver it unmodified to the downstream tunnel endpoint.

The PEP WAN sender/transmitter handles the transport of the PEP'ed data across the preferred transports where that transmission is tuned to well-match the selected transport's characteristics. In some embodiments this includes one or more of the following:.

The peer accelerator resides in a network side component such as a PoP, for example, the peer accelerator <NUM> and the PoP <NUM> of <FIG>. There may be more than one peer accelerator for load balancing, scaling and system redundancy. A location of the peer accelerator may optimize transport characteristics, such as, latency, jitter, throughput, or the like. The peer accelerator acts as the peer to the accelerator. The peer accelerator performs the equivalent of the client functions. The peer accelerator may serve and manage multiple peer accelerator clients.

To coordinate each accelerator client and gateway/peer, there may exist a management network, for example, the management network <NUM> of <FIG>. The management network may be independent of the PoP or instantiated within the PoP. The management network may be accessible directly through the public internet or PoP. The management network may establish a secure tunnel directly to the management network via a VPN Firewall. The management network may include an Element Management System (EMS) to provision, configure, and manage the accelerator clients and gateways/peers. The management network may include a database for maintaining client and gateway/peer information and diagnostics. The database may store configuration data and logs. The management network may include other services for diagnostics, monitoring, and access permissions. In some embodiments the management network may include a Syslog server, Network Time Protocol (NTP) server, statistics and diagnostics server, or the like.

Multiple management networks can be added to handle system capacity and load. A peer device management client may be included on the CPE. Management traffic may be sent on a selected WAN from a prioritized WAN list. Management traffic may be sent or routed over multiple WANs concurrently.

The accelerators may support many WANs (<NUM> or more). Additional transports to augment a high latency satellite transport may be used. For example, the wireline network may include a DSL, cable, or fiber network. Network side components including the management network, PoPs, Accelerator Gateways, VPN Firewalls, Routers are scalable.

Claim 1:
An accelerator (<NUM>, <NUM>) to provide a combined transport combining Wide-Area Network "WAN" transports (<NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM>), the accelerator comprising:
a tunnel manager (<NUM>) configured to maintain tunnels (<NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM>) traversing each of the WAN transports (<NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM>);
an inspector (<NUM>) configured to perform packet and IP flow classification to set a respective classification metric for a downstream packet to be sent over the combined transport;
a transport selector (<NUM>) configured to select a preferred tunnel from the tunnels (<NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM>) based on the respective classification metric of the downstream packet; and
a sender (<NUM>) configured to send the downstream packet over the preferred tunnel,
wherein the WAN transports (<NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM>) comprise a high latency satellite transport (<NUM>) and a low latency transport (<NUM>, <NUM>), and a respective tunnel (<NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM>) connects the accelerator (<NUM>) to a peer accelerator (<NUM>) via one of the WAN transports (<NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM>), wherein the average round-trip time of the high latency satellite transport (<NUM>) is at least <NUM> greater than the average round-trip time of the low latency transport (<NUM>, <NUM>); and
wherein the accelerator (<NUM>, <NUM>) is configured to select, from the tunnels (<NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM>), a tunnel (<NUM>, <NUM>) associated with the low latency transport (<NUM>, <NUM>) as the preferred tunnel when the respective classification metric indicates a start-up period of bulky traffic, and select, from the tunnels (<NUM>, <NUM>, <NUM>), a tunnel (<NUM>) associated with the high latency satellite transport (<NUM>) as the preferred tunnel when the respective classification metric indicates post the start-up period, wherein the start-up period is set to be less than or equal to a round-trip time over the high latency satellite transport (<NUM>).