Patent ID: 8127350

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; and a multi-service network client 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, wherein the VPN handler encrypts outbound network packets and decrypts inbound network packets to securely tunnel the network packets between the cellular mobile device and the remote VPN security device, wherein the VPN handler establishes an Secure Socket Layer (SSL) control channel with the remote VPN security device and, upon a successful authentication, receives a session cookie with a unique identifier, wherein, in the event communication with the remote VPN security device is temporarily lost, the VPN handler performs a fast reconnect by issuing the session cookie to the remote VPN security device, and wherein, when performing the fast reconnect, the VPN handler identifies a set of transport mechanisms currently available to the cellular mobile device and, when only a cellular network is available and not a wireless packet-based connection, the VPN handler defers the fast reconnect until application-layer data is received from a user application and ready to be sent via the VPN connection; 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.