The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 01, 2016
Filed:
Nov. 20, 2015
Fortinet, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Fortinet, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
Methods and systems for balancing load among firewall security devices (FSDs) are provided. According to one embodiment, session data, including session entries representing previously established traffic sessions from a particular source to a particular destination and forming an association between the previously established session and a particular FSD, is maintained for each port of a session-aware switching device. When a TCP SYN packet is received, the switching device: (i) reduces its vulnerability to a DoS attack by foregoing installation of a forward session entry for the forward traffic session within the session data until a processed TCP SYN/ACK packet associated with the corresponding reverse traffic session is received; (ii) selects an FSD to associate with the forward traffic session and a corresponding reverse traffic session by performing a load balancing function on the TCP SYN packet; and (iii) causes the TCP SYN packet to be processed by the selected FSD.