Network Connection Manager for Live Session Migration
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing systems face challenges in managing long-running network connections, leading to uneven load balancing, resource utilization issues, and complications during maintenance, resulting in impacted quality of service and increased costs.
Innovation Solution
A network connection and termination system that allows for seamless migration of live network sessions between backend servers without interrupting the connection, enabling fault-tolerant and durable network connections, and providing APIs for load balancing and resource management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a large fleet of servers is deployed to manage numerous client devices and maintain secure connections, then the system can handle more connections and improve reliability, but the device complexity and infrastructure cost increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a connection manager as an intermediary component that sits between the client devices and the backend servers. This connection manager handles connection establishment, maintenance, and termination, thereby reducing the complexity burden on individual servers while ensuring reliable connections across the system.
Solution Approach 2:
The connection manager serves multiple functions including connection establishment, connection maintenance, load balancing, and session persistence. By consolidating these diverse functions into a single component, the system reduces overall infrastructure complexity while maintaining high reliability for managing numerous client devices.
2Stability of the object's composition
If connections are kept long-lived to avoid reconnection overhead and data loss, then connection stability improves, but resource utilization becomes uneven and maintenance becomes more difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the connection management functionality from the backend servers and places it in a dedicated connection manager. This allows long-lived connections to be maintained for stability while the connection manager handles maintenance operations separately, making server maintenance easier without disrupting client connections.
Solution Approach 2:
The connection manager dynamically manages connection lifecycles, allowing connections to be maintained long-lived when stable while enabling flexible redistribution and termination during maintenance events. This dynamic approach balances connection stability with operational ease by adapting connection management to current system conditions.
3Reliability
If traffic is drained from backend instances during maintenance by waiting for existing sessions to complete, then connection integrity is preserved, but maintenance time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The connection manager performs preliminary actions by proactively managing connection redistribution before maintenance events occur. It can pre-establish connections to standby instances and gradually shift traffic, allowing maintenance to proceed faster while preserving connection integrity through controlled migration rather than waiting for natural session completion.
4Productivity
If load balancing distributes connections across multiple backend resources, then resource utilization is optimized, but certain resources may accumulate more connections than others leading to capacity limits
Solution Approach 1:
The connection manager implements feedback mechanisms by monitoring connection distribution and resource capacity in real-time. When it detects that certain backend resources are approaching capacity limits, it dynamically adjusts load balancing to redistribute connections more evenly, thereby optimizing resource utilization while maintaining service quality and preventing resource exhaustion.
Data Source
AI summary
Various embodiments of a network connection and termination system that provides managed network connection functionality to clients are described. In some embodiments, a network connection and termination system can enable service or application developers to un-bind a live network session from a specific backend server and migrate the live network session to a different backend server, without interrupting the network session and without network client cooperation. This is accomplished by a network connection manager being the actual endpoint for the network connections, instead of any backend resources. The network connection manager can be fault-tolerant. In some embodiments, it contains multiple nodes replicating the state of the network connections so that if one node fails, another can resume the connection in its place.