Intermediary Appliance Maintains Client-Server Statefulness
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for maintaining statefulness in client-server interactions, such as cookie-based and IP-based sticky load balancing, are limited by the need for cookies, which are often disabled by users, and do not function well in wireless networks, restricting e-commerce and stateful web content growth.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that maintains statefulness without querying or storing information on the client, using an intermediary appliance to manage Session Identifiers (SIDs) and Server Session Identifiers (SSIDs) to enable stateful interactions between clients and servers, allowing the appliance to direct requests to the appropriate server while masking client identity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If cookie-based load balancing is used to maintain statefulness, then the server can identify client history, but users may disable or delete cookies, causing statefulness to be lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary appliance (load balancer) that sits between the client and server. This appliance maintains session state information locally and attaches session identifiers to requests, enabling the server to maintain statefulness without relying on client-side cookies. The appliance acts as a mediator that preserves client identity across requests even when cookies are disabled or deleted.
2Reliability
If IP-based sticky load balancing is used, then requests from the same IP go to the same server, but all clients through a proxy share the same IP, resulting in unbalanced loads
Solution Approach 1:
The load balancer appliance serves as an intermediary that receives requests from clients, assigns unique session identifiers, and tracks which server handled each request. By maintaining its own session state table, the appliance can distribute requests to different servers based on client identity rather than IP address, achieving both statefulness and balanced load distribution even when clients access through a common proxy.
3Reliability
If cookies are used to maintain statefulness, then the server can track client sessions, but the system becomes complex requiring coordination of multiple cookie lifecycles
Solution Approach 1:
The load balancer appliance consolidates session management complexity into itself. Instead of coordinating multiple cookie lifecycles across client and server, the appliance maintains a single session state table locally, attaching session identifiers to requests. This centralizes the complexity in the appliance rather than distributing it across multiple components, simplifying the overall system architecture.
4Reliability
If the server stores client history in a lookup table, then statefulness is maintained, but the server must query and store information on the client, creating security and privacy concerns
Solution Approach 1:
The load balancer appliance acts as an intermediary that prevents direct server access to client information. The appliance maintains session state locally and attaches session identifiers to requests, allowing the server to interact with clients through a layer of abstraction. This masks client identity from the server while preserving statefulness, addressing security and privacy concerns by minimizing direct exposure of client information.
Data Source
AI summary
The present invention provides systems and methods for maintaining stateful interactions between clients and servers. Furthermore, the invention provides systems and methods for maintaining stateful interactions between clients and load balancers. In one embodiment, the present invention provides systems and methods for maintaining statefulness without the need for the server to query and/or store information on the client.