Nortel Networks Corporation

Gregory P Burdett

Nalin Mistry

Bryant Fung

John O'Neill

Rene Imbeau

Mark Stubberfield

Michel Paquet

The present invention generally relates to the acceleration of customer premises equipment based virtual private networks (CPE-VPN). To provide virtual private network service from an enterprise network to a mobile client in a secure manner apparatus and method are provided whereby VPN service is provided which allows the wireless network to use data acceleration techniques. This is accomplished by providing a VPN acceleration server that terminates VPN tunnel from the enterprise network, accelerates the data for wireless transmission then encrypts the data for transmission to the mobile client (VPN acceleration client) over an encrypted acceleration tunnel. The encrypted acceleration tunnel may use PKI encryption.

Method and apparatus for accelerating CPE-based VPN transmissions over a wireless network

A fault tolerant modular computing or communications system is disclosed. The system comprises a plurality of primary processing modules and at least one spare module. These modules are preferably interconnected with a data network to switch and process network traffic. A control processing module controls overall operation of primary and spare modules. Upon failure of a primary processing module the control module senses the failure and determines if it is a recoverable fault, by preferably resetting the failed module. If fault is not recoverable, as manifested by an unsuccessful reset in a first sparing interval, data at the failed module is switched to a spare module. If the fault is recoverable and the reset is successful, data is not switched. If a subsequent failure of that module occurs in a second stability interval, data is immediately switched to the spare module. The system is particularly well suited for distinguishing software faults from non-recoverable hardware faults.

Fault tolerant system and method

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Georgetown, Canada

Gregory P Burdett