Transparent HTTP Compression via Network Policy Enforcement
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current telecommunications networks face challenges in enforcing data compression for HTTP traffic, as they cannot influence endpoints to compress data, leading to increased bandwidth usage and network overload, especially when proxies are intrusive and require configuration changes or disrupt protocol functionality.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a policy-enforcing point within the network that inspects IP datagrams for compressibility and applies compression dynamically, modifying headers to maintain sequence continuity and integrity, allowing transparent compression without endpoint configuration changes or cooperation, using a datagram inspection module, data compression module, and header modification module to compress HTTP/1.1 responses on the fly.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If a proxy server is introduced to force compression, then bandwidth usage is reduced, but configuration changes are required and protocol functionality is disrupted
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a network element that acts as an intermediary to perform compression on HTTP responses transparently. This intermediary inspects IP datagrams, identifies HTTP responses, applies compression dynamically, and forwards them to endpoints without requiring endpoint configuration changes or disrupting protocol functionality.
2Quantity of substance
If a proxy server is introduced to force compression, then bandwidth usage is reduced, but additional delays are introduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements compression by inspecting and compressing HTTP responses as they traverse the network, before reaching the endpoint. This preliminary compression action reduces the overall bandwidth consumption without requiring additional end-to-end proxy connections that would introduce delays.
3Quantity of substance
If endpoints are configured to compress data, then bandwidth usage is reduced, but endpoint configuration changes are required
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables the network infrastructure to perform compression services automatically without requiring endpoints to have compression capabilities or configuration. The network element self-services by identifying compressible HTTP responses and applying compression transparently, eliminating the need for endpoint configuration changes.
4Quantity of substance
If complete data stream tunnelling is used for compression, then compression is achieved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the compressible HTTP response data from the complete data stream for compression, rather than tunnelling the entire stream. This selective extraction approach applies compression only where applicable (HTTP responses with suitable content types) without requiring complex end-to-end tunnelling infrastructure.
Data Source
AI summary
A telecommunications network policy enforcing point operable to route IP datagrams in a two-way communication between a first endpoint in a telecommunications network and a second endpoint in the telecommunications network and operable to compress, in accordance with a data compression policy, IP datagrams of a response transmitted by the second endpoint to the first endpoint. The response is of a layer 7 protocol that supports compression, a layer level being an Open Systems Interconnection, OSI, layer in an OSI Reference Model, and each IP datagram of the response comprises a sequence of bytes of data and a header defining a sequence number of the first byte of data in the IP datagram.