Patent ID: 8839427

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, by a network device, traffic intended for a customer device based on a notification, from the customer device, indicating that the customer device is subject of a network attack; determining, by the network device and based on receiving the traffic, a distance between the network device and each set of devices of a plurality of sets of devices, each set of devices including a plurality of devices that includes one or more mitigation devices; identifying, by the network device, a particular set of devices of the plurality of sets of devices based on determining the distance between the network device and each set of devices of the plurality of sets of devices, the distance between the network device and the particular set of devices being shortest out of the distance between the network device and each set of devices of the plurality of sets of devices; and redirecting, by the network device, the traffic to the particular set of devices using an anycast address associated with the one or more mitigation devices of the particular set of devices, redirecting the traffic including: redirecting the traffic intended for the customer device to the anycast address associated with the one or more mitigation devices of the particular set of devices, identifying the particular set of devices and redirecting the traffic to the particular set of devices being part of a load-balancing technique, each of the one or more mitigation devices, of the plurality of sets of devices, being addressable via the anycast address, the traffic being redirected to the particular set of devices to cause the one or more mitigation devices of the particular set of devices to: process the traffic to remove malicious traffic and leave legitimate traffic, and forward the legitimate traffic to the customer device via a tunnel.