Patent ID: 7562146

Claim:
A method for providing a client with a reliable connection to a host service, the method comprising: establishing, by an agent of a client, stored in memory, a first connection between the client and a first protocol service, stored in memory, using a first protocol communicated over a transport layer protocol, the first protocol being an application level tunneling protocol for encapsulating a plurality of secondary protocols, the agent configured to encapsulate a second protocol within the first protocol and communicate to a host service, stored in memory, using the second protocol; establishing a second connection between the first protocol service and the host service using one of the plurality of the secondary protocols; maintaining a queue of data packets most recently transmitted via the first connection on at least one of the client and the first protocol service; and upon failure of the first connection: maintaining the second connection; continuing to maintain the queue of data packets most recently transmitted via the first connection; and establishing a third connection between the client and the first protocol service using the first protocol.