Patent ID: 8626946

Claim:
A method for providing a hierarchy of appliances to more efficiently access resources across a plurality of branch offices, the method comprising: (a) establishing, by a first aggregator appliance, connections with a first plurality of branch office appliances, each of the first plurality of branch office appliances providing access via one or more connections to one or more services of a first plurality of servers to a first plurality of client devices in a first branch office; (b) establishing, by a second aggregator appliance, connections with a second plurality of branch office appliances, each of the second plurality of branch office appliances providing access via one or more connections to one or more services of a second plurality of servers to a second plurality of client devices in a second branch office, the first plurality of branch office appliances not having information identifying the second plurality of branch office appliances; (c) establishing a connection between the first aggregator appliance and the second aggregator appliance to exchange aggregated information about branch office appliances not connected to an aggregator appliance receiving the information, the first aggregator appliance receiving from the second aggregator appliance aggregated information about operation of the second plurality of branch office appliances collected by the second aggregator appliance; (d) receiving, by the first aggregator appliance, from a first branch office appliance of the first plurality of branch offices appliances a request from a client device for access to a resource; (e) identifying, by the first aggregator appliance via the aggregated information from the second aggregator appliance, a second branch office appliance from the second plurality of branch office appliances to service the request; (f) transmitting, by the first aggregator appliance, to the first branch office appliance information identifying the second branch office appliance; and (g) establishing, by the client device, a connection with the second branch office appliance.