Patent ID: 8305883

Claim:
A method performed by a connection manager executed by a processor, the method comprising: establishing a plurality of connections between a first process and a second process: wherein each connection of the plurality of connections is connected via a different type of communication fabric of a plurality of types of communication fabrics; wherein the operation of establishing the plurality of connections comprises establishing the plurality of connections in an order that (a) starts with a first connection using a connection type that is slowest, and that then (b) proceeds with one or more subsequent connections using connection types that are progressively faster; and wherein the first connection comprises a packet based connection, and at least one of the subsequent connections comprises a direct connection; after establishing the direct connection, using the direct connection to share data between the first process and the second process; maintaining the packet based connection while using the direct connection to share data between the first process and the second process; after using the direct connection to share data between the first process and the second process, determining that the direct connection has failed; and in response to determining that the direct connection has failed, using the packet based connection to re-share at least some of the data between the first process and the second process; wherein the operation of maintaining the packet based connection while using the direct connection enables data to be re-shared via the packet based connection without re-establishing the packet based connection.