Patent ID: 8489670

Claim:
A method, comprising: establishing an overlay network comprising at least one or more edge regions, and one or more gateway regions, wherein each edge region and each gateway region comprises one or more servers, and wherein a client is coupled to an edge region to communicate with an origin server coupled to a gateway region; and as a client attempts to communicate with the origin server, establishing a connection and initiating a data transfer between a server in an edge region and a server in a gateway region by the following sub-steps: (a) from the server in the edge region, sending the server in the gateway region a SYN over a first TCP connection, the SYN comprising a sequence number field having a random initial sequence number, an ACK having a suggested initial sequence number, and a set of one or more TCP options; (b) after sending the SYN over the first TCP connection, faking receipt at the server in the edge region of a dummy SYN/ACK for the first TCP connection, the dummy SYN/ACK comprising a sequence number field having the suggested initial sequence number, and an ACK having one plus the random initial sequence number; (c) until a real SYN/ACK is received at the server in the edge region from the server in the gateway region, sending from the server in the edge region one or more data packets, each such data packet having its ACK bit cleared and including the set of one or more TCP options; (d) upon receipt of the SYN at the server in the gateway region, the server in the gateway region establishing a second TCP connection using at least one of the set of TCP options, the second TCP connection being directed back to the server in the edge region; (e) generating the real SYN/ACK at the server in the gateway region and sending the real SYN/ACK to the server in the edge region; (f) receiving by the server in the gateway region of the one or more data packets, at least one data packet received having its ACK bit cleared; and (g) receiving the real SYN/ACK at the server in the edge region, wherein, upon receiving the real SYN/ACK, the server in the edge region clears the ACK bit.