Accelerating satellite access with low latency diversity transport

An accelerator to provide a combined transport combining Wide-Area Network (WAN) transports, the accelerator comprising:

• a tunnel manager to maintain tunnels traversing each of the WAN transports;
• an inspector to perform packet and IP flow classification to set a respective classification metric for a downstream packet to be sent over the combined transport;
• a transport selector to select a preferred tunnel from the tunnels based on the respective classification metric of the downstream packet;
• and
• a sender to send the downstream packet over the preferred tunnel,
• wherein the WAN transports comprise a high latency satellite transport and a low latency transport, and a respective tunnel connects the accelerator to a peer accelerator via one of the WAN transports, and
• wherein the accelerator selects, from the tunnels, a tunnel associated with the low latency transport as the preferred tunnel when the respective classification metric indicates a start-up period of bulky traffic, and selects, from the tunnels, a tunnel associated with the high latency satellite transport as the preferred tunnel when the respective classification metric indicates post the start-up period, wherein the start-up period is set to be less than or equal to a round-trip time over the high latency satellite transport.