Controlling Directional Asymmetricity in Wide Area Networks

A processor readable medium encoded with instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to:

• detect, at a first WAN device deployed at an edge of a Wide Area Network (WAN), a packet passing through the first WAN device and departing a node with which the first WAN device is associated for another node connected to the WAN;
• identify, by the first WAN device, a network destination address to which the packet is addressed;
• obtain from memory accessible to the first WAN device an identifier of another WAN device associated with the network destination address;
• and
• mark the packet with the identifier to generate a marked packet that identifies the another WAN device.

A method, comprising:

• detecting a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) synchronization-acknowledgement (SYN-ACK) packet being transmitted into a Wide Area Network (WAN);
• marking an option field in the TCP SYN-ACK packet with an identifier of a WAN device that is first to detect the TCP SYN-ACK packet to generate a marked TCP SYN-ACK packet;
• and
• passing the marked TCP SYN-ACK packet to the WAN for transmission to a network node to which the SYN-ACK packet is responsive.

A method, comprising:

• receiving a packet at a first Wide Are Network (WAN) device, the packet including an identifier of a second WAN device;
• and
• re-directing the packet to the second WAN device via a communication link different from a communication link via which the packet was received,
• wherein the first and second WAN devices are deployed at edges of the WAN.

An apparatus, comprising:

• a network interface;
• and
• a processor that is configured to:
• detect, at a first Wide Area Network (WAN) device deployed at an edge of a WAN, a packet passing through the first WAN device and departing a node with which the first WAN device is associated for another node connected to the WAN;
• identify, by the first WAN device, a network destination address to which the packet is addressed;
• obtain from memory accessible to the first WAN device an identifier of another WAN device associated with the network destination address;
• and
• mark the packet with the identifier to generate a marked packet.