Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Michael R Surkan

David Abzarian

Amit A Sehgal

Salahuddin C J Khan

Mohit Talwar

Eran Yariv

Gerardo Diaz Cuellar

Emanuel Paleologu

A system maintains a dormant state in the host, in which no beacons (or 'bubbles') are transmitted from the host when no application or service (collectively, 'processes') of the host is accepting unsolicited traffic via the edge traversal service. When at least one application or service begins to accept unsolicited traffic via the edge traversal service, the host enters a qualified state and begins transmitting the beacons. As each additional application or service begins to accept such traffic, the number of accepting applications and services is maintained. As applications and services terminate acceptance of such traffic, the number of accepting applications and services is decremented. When the last application or service terminates acceptance of unsolicited traffic via the edge traversal service, the host re-enters the dormant state and ceases transmission of its beacons.

Edge traversal service dormancy

A host firewall can determine and consider whether unsolicited traffic is inbound from beyond the edge of the network and allow or block such traffic based at least in part upon this characteristic. In one implementation, an edge traversal parameter can be set on a host firewall rule, which typically includes other parameters such as port, protocol, etc. If the unsolicited traffic received via an edge traversal interface matches a host firewall rule that has the edge traversal criterion, then the firewall does not block the traffic. On the other hand, if the unsolicited traffic received via an edge traversal interface fails to satisfy the edge traversal criterion on any firewall rule, then the firewall blocks the traffic.

Host firewall integration with edge traversal technology

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Michael R Surkan