Patent ID: 8850063

Claim:
A method comprising: at a wide-area application services (WAAS) device in a first data center, receiving a packet from a device of the first data center; determining a directionality of the packet relative to a destination device of the packet; determining whether the packet has an indicator that associates the packet with a WAAS device; if the directionality of the packet indicates that the packet is to be transmitted across a wide area network to a second data center in which the destination device resides and it is determined that the packet does not have an indicator that associates the packet with a WAAS device: inserting an indicator in the packet that associates the packet with the WAAS device in the first data center; and forwarding the packet for transmission over the wide area network; and if the directionality of the packet indicates that the packet is to be transmitted across the wide area network to the second data center and it is determined that the packet has an indicator that does not associate the packet with the WAAS device in the first data center, determining that the packet is a looped packet that was transmitted to the WAAS device as a result of an error.