Patent ID: 8620999

Claim:
A method for network communications among a network appliance connectable to a client device via a wide area network and one or more server devices via a local area network, the method comprising, at the network appliance: receiving, from the client device via the wide area network, a request for a network resource having a plurality of references to respective objects; retrieving the network resource from the one or more server devices via the local area network; identifying based, at least in part, on cache control header information or object type information of each object referenced in the network resource whether that object is a cacheable object; modifying the network resource by rewriting one or more of the plurality of references to specify one or more different references to one or more of the objects to cause the client device to open a greater number of concurrent TCP connections to the network appliance via the wide area network than otherwise would have been opened had the network resource not been modified, due to a browser program imposed limit on a number of concurrent TCP connections, said modifying including: for each object of the network resource, if that object is a cacheable object, then refraining from rewriting an initial reference to that object in the network resource, or rewriting the initial reference to that object in the network resource to a first different reference to enable the browser program to properly cache that object in a browser side cache and retrieve that object from the browser side cache during a current browsing session or a subsequent browsing session, and for each object of the network resource, if that object is a non-cacheable object, then rewriting the initial reference to that object in the network resource indicating a host name of the object to a second different reference indicating an IP address to that object; sending the modified network resource to the client device via the wide area network; receiving a plurality requests for the objects from the client device via the wide area network over the greater number of concurrent TCP connections; and replying to the plurality of requests for the objects by sending the objects to the client device via the wide area network over the greater number of concurrent TCP connections.