{
  "patent_number": "US 9571603",
  "country": "US",
  "title": "How Servers Share an IP Address for High Availability",
  "original_title": "Redundancy network protocol system",
  "summary": "Cisco's 2017 patent describes a system where multiple servers can share a single virtual IP address to ensure an application stays online even if one server fails.",
  "what_it_does": "This patent details a system where servers work together to keep an application running. A 'profile' for an application is shared between servers, and this profile includes a virtual IP address (VIP) that clients use to connect. Each server has a 'priority' level. The system automatically picks the server with the highest priority to handle client requests. If the active server fails, another server with a high enough priority takes over. The system constantly checks if servers are still 'neighbors' by sending and receiving status messages. It also tracks how many other servers are sending status messages to each server. If the counts don't match, priorities might be adjusted. For example, if Server A is supposed to get status messages from 3 other servers but only gets them from 2, its priority might decrease.",
  "what_it_does_not_cover": [
    "Systems where servers are not at least one router hop away from each other.",
    "Protocols that do not use a virtual IP address shared between servers.",
    "Systems that do not involve comparing priorities between servers to select an active one.",
    "Methods that do not monitor server health via status messages.",
    "Applications that do not require high availability."
  ],
  "filed": "2013-09-17",
  "granted": "2017-02-14",
  "expires": "2033-09-17",
  "status": "active",
  "holder": "Cisco Technology Inc",
  "holder_url": "https://patentbrief.org/company/cisco-technology-inc",
  "inventors": [
    {
      "name": "Tim Evens",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/tim-evens"
    }
  ],
  "times_cited": 4,
  "tags": [
    "telecommunications",
    "software",
    "consumer_electronics"
  ],
  "abstract": "A redundancy network protocol system may include a server to manage one or more virtual internet protocol address (VIP) profiles. Each VIP profile may be shared across one or more neighboring servers. The neighboring servers may be in the same broadcast domain or distributed to be multiple Layer 3 hops away from one another. The redundancy network protocol system may monitor server health and reachability and further manage the server health and reachability to achieve redundancy. The system may be used to provide high availability to selected applications.",
  "url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/9571603/redundancy-network-protocol-system",
  "markdown_url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/9571603/redundancy-network-protocol-system/md",
  "google_patents_url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US9571603",
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}