International Business Machines Corporation

Karen Marie Tracey

David Mark Ogle

Barton Clark Vashaw

Edward Glen Britton

Carolyn Haibt Norton

David Paul Brooks

Methods, systems and computer program products are provided which route messages from a source device on a first network to a destination device on a second network through a first routing device where the first routing device transmits a message to a master routing device. The first routing device receives a routing address from the master routing device responsive to the transmitted message. The routing address specifies an address of a device to which subsequent communications to the destination device are routed. The first routing device stores the received routing address in a list of addresses so as to associate the stored routing address with an address of the destination device of the message. The first routing device may also determine a routing address for a second message from the stored list of routing addresses based upon a destination address of the second message and transmit the second message to the determined routing address. The routing table of the routing device may be updated without requiring modification of TCP/IP messages.

Adaptive message routing in a multiple network environment with a master

Method and apparatus for returning packet acknowledgements from a packet receiving node to a packet sending node of a packet network. During a predefined initial startup phase of a packet connection between the sending and receiving nodes, an acknowledgement is returned to the sending node for every group of X packets received from the sending node. After the expiration of the initial startup phase, an acknowledgement is returned for every W-N packets received from the sending node. W represents the maximum number of packets that can be in transit on the connection at any given time, N is an integer less than W. If packet congestion occurs, the algorithm reverts to returning an acknowledgement for every group of X packets.

Method and apparatus for scheduling packet acknowledgements

Methods, systems and computer program products are provided which dynamically balance the load between gateways which provide access between a first computer network and a second computer network. This load balancing includes receiving at a gateway a communication to be transmitted to a second computer network from a source device on the first computer network. The gateway determines, preferably based on an address contained in the communication, through which of the gateways the communication is to be transmitted and then either transmits the communication to the second network or over the first network to the determined gateway. A redirect message may then be sent to the source device to direct subsequent messages to the proper gateway. The gateway determination may be made by dividing a resource identifier into subgroups, summing the subgroups and then dividing the sum by the number of parallel gateways. The remainder may then be used as a gateway identifier.

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Apex, NC, United States of America

Karen Marie Tracey