Patent ID: 8473734

Claim:
A cellular mobile device comprising: a transmitter and receiver to send and receive cellular communications in the form of radio frequency signals; a microprocessor; an operating system executing on the microprocessor to provide an operating environment of application software; a multi-service network client downloaded to the cellular mobile device and registered with the operating system as a single application, wherein the multi-service network client comprises: a virtual private network (VPN) handler to establish a VPN connection with a remote VPN security device upon authenticating a user to the remove security device, wherein the VPN handler encrypts output network packets and decrypts inbound network packets to securely tunnel the network packets between the cellular mobile device and the remote VPN security device; a security manager to receive the decrypted inbound network packets from the VPN handler and apply at least one security service to the decrypted network packets; and a VPN control application that provides a unified user interface that allows a user to configure both the VPN handler and the security manager, wherein the VPN handler establishes the VPN connection to concurrently include both a layer three (L3) tunnel that uses a first type of transport layer protocol of the operating system and a layer four (L4) tunnel that uses a second type of transport layer protocol of the operating system, and wherein, after establishing the L3 tunnel and prior to sending data on the L3 tunnel, the VPN handler determines whether network ports associated with the L3 tunnel are unblocked by the operating system and, when the network ports are unblocked, automatically transitions from the L4 tunnel to the L3 tunnel without terminating the VPN connection.