Patent ID: 8248944

Claim:
A computer system for managing a flow of data between endpoints that reside in individual networks, the computer system comprising: a data center within a cloud computing platform that hosts a source endpoint, wherein the source endpoint is allocated to an application running on both the cloud computing platform and a private enterprise network; a resource within the private enterprise network that hosts a destination endpoint that is allocated to the application, wherein the source endpoint and the destination endpoint are connected by a tunnel that transports the data flow directly therebetween, wherein the tunnel enables a higher-level connection running on top of a lower-level connection, and wherein a congestion-control mechanism and a packet-loss mechanism are both built into each of the higher-level connection and the lower-level connection, respectively; and a fabric controller running within the data center that establishes the tunnel and that configures the connections within the tunnel, wherein configuring the connections includes selectively disabling the congestion-control mechanism and the packet-loss mechanism built into the lower-level connection and selectively enabling the congestion-control mechanism and the packet-loss mechanism built into the higher-level connection.