Patent ID: 7965637

Claim:
A method comprising: storing, with a proxy device, respective wait times for a plurality of classes of network connections for a network protocol, wherein each of the wait times defines a time to wait before initiating a process to determine whether a network connection for the respective classes of network connections has failed, and wherein at least two of the wait times for the plurality of classes of network connections specify different wait times; defining a first one of the classes of network connections as a class of network connections between the proxy device and a set of client devices; defining a second one of the classes of network connects as a class of network connections between the proxy device and a set of server devices; and automatically setting the wait time for the class of network connections with the client devices less than the wait time for the class of network connections with the server devices; receiving with the proxy device a request from a network device to establish a network connection; analyzing the request with the proxy device to identify one of the plurality of classes of network connections to which the requested network connection belongs; establishing a socket with the proxy device for the network connection to the network device, wherein the network connection is established to have the wait time associated with identified one of the plurality of classes of network connections; and initiating the process to determine whether the network connection has failed when the wait time for the identified one of the plurality of classes of network connections has passed since a last successful communication on the network connection.