Patent ID: 8069250

Claim:
A method of operating an inline network appliance, the method comprising: intercepting data traffic flowing in a given transport control protocol (TCP) session between a first TCP endpoint and a second TCP endpoint for processing by a one-way analyzer; receiving first data traffic of the given TCP session from the first TCP endpoint with the inline network appliance; providing the received first data traffic from the first TCP endpoint to the one-way analyzer for processing and receiving corresponding processed data traffic from the one-way analyzer; transmitting the first data traffic that has been processed by the one-way analyzer from the inline network appliance to the second TCP endpoint in the given TCP session; receiving second data traffic in the given TCP session from the second TCP endpoint at the inline network appliance in the given TCP session; processing the received second data traffic at the inline network appliance including modifying TCP acknowledgement numbers in the received data traffic at the inline network appliance in the given TCP session, wherein the processing the received second data traffic at the inline network appliance comprises processing the received second data traffic at the inline network appliance without at least one of: reordering out of order packets in the received second data traffic at the inline network appliance; queuing the received second data traffic at the inline network appliance; and performing fragment reassembly operations on the received second data traffic at the inline network appliance; and transmitting the second data traffic containing the modified TCP acknowledgement numbers to the first TCP endpoint in the given TCP session.