Patent ID: 8346966

Claim:
A method comprising: intermediating, by a gateway device, a remote file connection session between a client computing system and a file server over a network; maintaining by the gateway device, in a storage cache within or accessible by the gateway device, one or more shared resources of the file server; intercepting, by the gateway device, one or more handshake messages transmitted by the client computing system during an initiation of the remote file connection session between the client computing system and the file server; modifying, by the gateway device, one or more of the handshake messages transmitted by the client computing system or the file server to cause the client computing system to transmit a request for a referral link to a shared resource hosted on the file server; and modifying, by the gateway device, a response to the request for a referral link transmitted by the file server to identify the storage cache, the response operative to cause the client computing system to automatically connect to the storage cache to access the shared resource using a path name specified in the response to the request for a referral link; wherein: the requested shared resource of the file server is identified in the referral link received at the gateway device by a first respective path name comprising a host name and a shared resource identifier; the corresponding cached shared resource maintained in the storage cache is identified by a second path name comprising the first path name corresponding to the respective shared resource maintained at the file server and an identifier of the storage cache; and the response to the request for a referral link is automatically modified such that the path name specified in the response to the request for a referral link received by the client computing system is replaced by the second path name corresponding to the shared resource requested by the client and such that the modification of the response is transparent to an end user using the client computing system.