Patent ID: 8843738

Claim:
A method of authentication between a client and a server, the method comprising: negotiating a secure network connection between the client and the server using Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol; providing a unique Abbreviated Session Identifier (ASI) by the server along with a TLS protocol session identifier; associating the unique ASI with the TLS protocol session identifier; and transmitting the unique ASI along with the TLS protocol session identifier to the client, wherein subsequent data packets transferred between the client and the server include the unique ASI, wherein the subsequent data packets comprise packets other than TLS handshake packets, wherein the subsequent data packets correspond to application data packets comprising application-level data for exchange between the client and the server, and wherein including the unique ASI in the subsequent data packets comprises causing a pre-existing field of each of the subsequent data packets to hold a data value, the data value being at least a portion of the unique ASI, the data value, as conveyed via the pre-existing field of each of the subsequent data packets, also used for another purpose during processing of each of the subsequent data packets.