Patent ID: 8004973

Claim:
A method for delivering an incoming packet through a performance enhancing proxy network device to a recipient computing system, the performance enhancing proxy network device coupled in a parallel configuration, the method comprising: receiving, by a router, a data packet having a first destination IP address as a destination IP address of the data packet, the destination IP address specifying a recipient computing system on a local network; diverting, by the router via Internet Protocol (IP) layer routing, the data packet to the performance enhancing proxy network device according to the first destination IP address matching a policy based IP routing rule of a set of rules instead of changing the first destination IP address of the data packet to an IP address of the performance enhancing proxy network device, the performance enhancing proxy network device coupled in parallel to the router, the policy based IP routing rule identifying the IP address of the performance enhancing proxy network device; processing, by the performance enhancing proxy network device, the diverted data packet while preserving the first destination IP address as the destination IP address of the data packet; transmitting, by the performance enhancing proxy network device, the processed data packet to the router identified by the performance enhancing proxy network device as the router selected from a plurality of routers for originally diverting the data packet to the performance enhancing proxy network device, the processed data packet comprising the first destination IP address specifying the recipient computing device; receiving, by the router, the processed data packet from the performance enhancing proxy network device, the received processed data packet having the first destination IP address as the destination IP address of the data packet; and sending, by the router, over the local network, the processed data packet to the recipient computing system identified by the first destination IP address.