Dynamic middlebox redirection based on client characteristics

Abstract

Traffic redirection methods include determining a quality-affective factor comprising a quality-affective factor in an existing connection between a client and a server in a network. The quality-affective factor is compared to a threshold to determine whether the connection would benefit from a network processing function. A router is reconfigured to exclude the middlebox from the connection, if the connection would not benefit from the network processing function and if the middlebox is already present in the connection, to cease operation of the middlebox on the connection. The router reconfiguration is delayed until the connection is idle.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.