Agile network protocol for secure communications with assured system availability

Abstract

A plurality of computer nodes communicate using seemingly random Internet Protocol source and destination addresses. Data packets matching criteria defined by a moving window of valid addresses are accepted for further processing, while those that do not meet the criteria are quickly rejected. Improvements to the basic design include (1) a load balancer that distributes packets across different transmission paths according to transmission path quality; (2) a DNS proxy server that transparently creates a virtual private network in response to a domain name inquiry; (3) a large-to-small link bandwidth management feature that prevents denial-of-service attacks at system chokepoints; (4) a traffic limiter that regulates incoming packets by limiting the rate at which a transmitter can be synchronized with a receiver; and (5) a signaling synchronizer that allows a large number of nodes to communicate with a central node by partitioning the communication function between two separate entities.

1 . A data processing device, comprising memory storing a domain name server (DNS) proxy module that intercepts DNS requests sent by a client and, for each intercepted DNS request, when the intercepted DNS request corresponds to a secure server, determines whether the client is authorized to access the secure server and, if so, automatically initiates an encrypted channel between the client and the secure server. 
     
     
         2 . The data processing device of  claim 1 , wherein automatically initiating an encrypted channel between the client and the secure server comprises establishing an IP address hoping scheme between the client and the secure server. 
     
     
         3 . The data processing device of  claim 1 , wherein automatically initiating an encrypted channel between the client and the secure server avoids sending a true IP address of the secure server to the client.