Splitting Gateway Control Between Local CPE and Remote Server
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Solution Overview
Problem
As network traffic increases, traditional gateway computers face challenges in managing bandwidth and processing power, becoming cost-prohibitive for organizations to maintain sufficient processing and storage capacity to handle rich content demands, leading to inefficiencies in network traffic management.
Innovation Solution
The solution involves splitting the control of customer premises equipment (CPE) between an off-board central processing unit and the CPE's CPU, using software-defined networking (SDN) to store and update the state of the gateway CPE, offloading computational tasks such as mean opinion score (MOS) algorithms and middle-box security applications to a remote vendor computer, optimizing traffic flow and reducing latency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If a gateway computer is equipped with sufficient processing power and storage capacity to handle increased network traffic, then network traffic management capability is improved, but cost becomes prohibitive
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the gateway computer's processing functions by separating the control plane from the data plane. The control plane is offloaded to a remote server, while the data plane remains at the local CPE. This segmentation allows the local device to handle high-speed data forwarding without the overhead of complex control plane processing, achieving high network traffic management capability without requiring expensive high-capacity local hardware.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a remote server as an intermediary between the local CPE and the network management system. The remote server handles control plane functions including routing decisions, security policies, and traffic management. This intermediary approach enables sophisticated network traffic management while keeping the local CPE simple and cost-effective.
2Productivity
If computational tasks are offloaded to a remote vendor computer, then CPE throughput is enhanced, but bandwidth consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by pre-computing routing tables, security policies, and traffic management rules on the remote server before they are needed at the CPE. The control plane information is prepared in advance and pushed to the CPE, eliminating the need for real-time computation during data plane operations. This approach enhances CPE throughput while minimizing bandwidth consumption during critical data forwarding operations.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques for distributing computation and storage tasks between customer premises equipment and a remote vendor computer are disclosed. The techniques include receiving, at a customer premises computer equipment, a TCP-based data flow from a client, rewriting the IP header of the TCP-based data flow, and forwarding the TCP-based data flow to a defined TCP port. The techniques also include a transient termination server process operating in user space of the customer premises equipment to read an application payload sent by the client and sending data to a deep packet inspection engine for classification. The techniques may include identifying, from the client data flow, a protocol associated with the data flow, looking up a handling policy from a policy cache stored in the customer premises equipment, and handling the data flow according to the handling policy.