Disclosed herein are system, method, and computer program product embodiments for providing an API description of an external network service and using the API to integrate the external service into a network. An embodiment operates by receiving, from a service provider, a description of an application programming interface (API), transmitting a call to the service provider using the API for creating a new instance of a service and transmitting to the service provider a traffic flow upon which the service will be applied.

In one aspect, the present disclosure relates to a method comprising: receiving, at a client device, information from a node manager about a plurality of nodes in a computer cluster, the information comprising a network address associated each of the plurality of nodes and sending, by the client device, a request to a load balancer to access a first node from the plurality of nodes, the request comprising a first URL including an encoded representation of the network address associated with the first node. The load balancer is configured to determine the request should be routed to a first network address based on decoding the URL, the first network address associated with a first node from the plurality of nodes and forward the request to the first node in response to the determining.

In one aspect, the present disclosure relates to a method comprising: receiving, at a client device, information from a node manager about a plurality of nodes in a computer cluster, the information comprising a network address associated each of the plurality of nodes and sending, by the client device, a request to a load balancer to access a first node from the plurality of nodes, the request comprising a first URL including an encoded representation of the network address associated with the first node. The load balancer is configured to determine the request should be routed to a first network address based on decoding the URL, the first network address associated with a first node from the plurality of nodes and forward the request to the first node in response to the determining.

A novel design of a gateway that handles traffic in and out of a network by using a datapath pipeline is provided. The datapath pipeline includes multiple stages for performing various data-plane packet-processing operations at the edge of the network. The processing stages include centralized routing stages and distributed routing stages. The processing stages can include service-providing stages such as NAT and firewall. The gateway caches the result previous packet operations and reapplies the result to subsequent packets that meet certain criteria. For packets that do not have applicable or valid result from previous packet processing operations, the gateway datapath daemon executes the pipelined packet processing stages and records a set of data from each stage of the pipeline and synthesizes those data into a cache entry for subsequent packets.

A novel design of a gateway that handles traffic in and out of a network by using a datapath pipeline is provided. The datapath pipeline includes multiple stages for performing various data-plane packet-processing operations at the edge of the network. The processing stages include centralized routing stages and distributed routing stages. The processing stages can include service-providing stages such as NAT and firewall. The gateway caches the result previous packet operations and reapplies the result to subsequent packets that meet certain criteria. For packets that do not have applicable or valid result from previous packet processing operations, the gateway datapath daemon executes the pipelined packet processing stages and records a set of data from each stage of the pipeline and synthesizes those data into a cache entry for subsequent packets.

Systems, software, and methods for managing networks of connected electronic devices are described. In one example, network management policy and network management applications are transferred automatically upon detection and identification of a new device, protocol or application on the network. In another example, information related to at least one aspect of the network is obtained by an NMAS, and at least one applicable management policy is identified by the NMAS; and the identified policy is used to manage at least one aspect of the network's operation.

Systems, software, and methods for managing networks of connected electronic devices are described. In one example, network management policy and network management applications are transferred automatically upon detection and identification of a new device, protocol or application on the network. In another example, information related to at least one aspect of the network is obtained by an NMAS, and at least one applicable management policy is identified by the NMAS; and the identified policy is used to manage at least one aspect of the network's operation.

Methods and terminal devices, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for selecting a server node. According to one of the methods, a terminal device first sends a connection request to one server node, and then sends a connection request to another server node after a time interval T. The terminal device first sends a connection request to a first server node. If the terminal device receives, within a first preset duration T, response information fed back by the first server node, the terminal device does not need to send a connection request to another server node. This helps save resources. In addition, the terminal device may establish a connection to a server node corresponding to received response information, and does not need to wait for feedback from another server node. This helps reduce a delay in establishing a connection between the terminal device and a server node.

A method for operating a distributed application includes: transmitting, by an application frontend, an initialization request to a registration server via a communication network; selecting, by the registration server, an instance of an application backend and transmitting a fully qualified domain name of the selected instance to the application frontend; transmitting, by the application frontend, a lookup request to a domain name server; transmitting, by the domain name server, an IP address associated with the fully qualified domain name to the application frontend; transmitting, by the application frontend, application data to the transmitted IP address via a connection provided by the communication network; selecting, by a core server of the communication network, a quality service for the distributed application; applying, by the communication network, a service quality determined by the selected quality service to the connection; and operating, by the distributed application, with the applied service quality.

A method for operating a distributed application includes: transmitting, by an application frontend, an initialization request to a registration server via a communication network; selecting, by the registration server, an instance of an application backend and transmitting a fully qualified domain name of the selected instance to the application frontend; transmitting, by the application frontend, a lookup request to a domain name server; transmitting, by the domain name server, an IP address associated with the fully qualified domain name to the application frontend; transmitting, by the application frontend, application data to the transmitted IP address via a connection provided by the communication network; selecting, by a core server of the communication network, a quality service for the distributed application; applying, by the communication network, a service quality determined by the selected quality service to the connection; and operating, by the distributed application, with the applied service quality.