Overloading Address Space For Improved Routing, Diagnostics, And Content-Relay Network

Abstract

A device includes hardware, including at least one processor and a memory, the device operable in a packet network, the device constructed to: (a) receive an internet protocol (IP) packet, said IP packet including at least address information and other information distinct from said address information, wherein said address information is sufficient to identify at least one device in said packet network; and (b) route or consume said IP packet based on said address information and on said other information.

We claim: 
     
         1 . A method performed by one or more computing devices inside a virtualized content relay network, the method comprising:
 (a) a set of relaying devices announcing overlapping membership in the same netblock;   (b) a relaying server spoofing the source address of an IP address leaving the virtual network to a remote resource, and encoding network state information in the IP address transmitted to the client; and   (b) a routing device that receiving the spoofed source address and extracts routing and/or identifying information from the destination address being that which was encoding by the primary relaying server.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein said configuration contains one or more of:
 (i) an IP address;   (ii) a MAC address;   (iii) a Maximum Transmission Unit;   (iv) an identifier; and   (v) a next-hop routing identifier.   
     
     
         2 . The method of transitioning between transport protocols using said identifying information of  claim 2 . 
     
     
         4 . A method of performing network address translation (NAT) inside a virtual interface, the method comprising:
 using identifying information contained within the IP address of packets received by a NAT virtual interface to generate a translated address for the outgoing packet.   
     
     
         5 . A method performed by one or more computing devices inside a virtualized content-relay network wherein said devices transition between transport protocols by using one or more of:
 (i) identifying information encoded in an IP address; and   (ii) a Network Address Translation (NAT) virtual interface that routes according to said identifying information.