KNITS: Switch-based Connection Hand-off

—This paper describes a mechanism allowing nodes to hand-off active connections by utilizing connection splicing at an edge-switch serving as a gateway to a server cluster. The mechanism is primarily intended to be used as part of a content aware request distribution strategy. Our approach uses an extended form of network address translation which maps inbound connection information (ie. address, port, and sequence number) to a separate outbound connection. A key difference in our approach is that while the switch performs network address translation and TCP splicing, the actual hand-off is triggered by the back-end nodes. This relieves the switch of performing any application layer responsibilities. Nodes may hand-off connections by first initiating a new connection to the destination and then sending a message to the gateway which splices the two connections together. The gateway modifies subsequent packet headers in order to create a transparent hand-off. This mechanism requires...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2002
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Eric Van Hensbergen, Athanasios E. Papathanasiou
• Keywords: Communications, Hand-off Active Connections, INFOCOM 2002, Mechanism Allowing Nodes, Network Address Translation