Patent ID: 8719447

Claim:
A system comprising: a head office; a branch office associated with the head office; a heterogeneous Wide Area Network (WAN) comprising a number of independent for-profit entities providing network services; and a plurality of Point of Presence (POP) locations between the head office and the branch office in the heterogeneous WAN configured to communicate data through a pay-per-performance peering relationship between the number of independent for-profit entities of the heterogeneous WAN, the communication of the data being sped up through intelligent design of the plurality of POP locations such that each POP location has a capability to analyze a destination of a packet of the data and to communicate the packet between the plurality of POP locations with an unaltered Internet Protocol (IP) address through at least one of a Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE), an Internet Protocol Security (IPsec), a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), and a Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN), at least one of the head office and the branch office being configured to generate secured transport data to be transmitted over at least one secure tunnel between at least one intervening firewall such that the data is routed securely through the plurality of POP locations toward a destination, the plurality of POP locations being implemented with a multi-segment architecture and enabling a multi-tenancy in each POP location, and each POP location implemented to provide a WAN optimization and an application acceleration during the communication of the data, wherein the WAN optimization and the application acceleration enable a distribution of a number of tasks across the WAN, wherein the system implements a debit-credit mechanism configured to handle payments as well as penalties associated with violation of a pair-wise mutual agreement between the number of independent for-profit entities providing network services in a segment of the heterogeneous WAN, and wherein the debit-credit mechanism is based on at least one of a bandwidth savings and a reduced latency in the segment of the heterogeneous WAN.