CLIENT-SIDE METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR IMPROVING THE AVAILABILITY AND PERFORMANCE OF NETWORK MEDIATED SERVICES

An intelligent local client agent can passively keep track of the state of network intermediaries, and can allocate network traffic according to different policies. In addition, an optional management platform running on a policy server provides an active network monitor of intermediaries and implements administrative policies. Under the present invention, an intermediary-aware application (e.g., a browser) will be configured to use the local client agent instead of an intermediary. The policy server can remotely load configuration information into a running client agent to provide administrative constraints or state changes. At each client agent, the intermediary servers (e.g. SOCKS servers) are ranked into tiers, so that several servers in the top-rated tier can be used concurrently to provide better performance. When the performance of a server degrades, its tier rating is lowered, and thus it may be avoided. Administratively defined tiers can be used to reserve resources for mission critical applications. Each client agent may passively collect local statistics on observed performance. The policy server may aggregate and evaluate the collected data, and use it as metrics to improve the tier groupings to the client agents, in order to provide better utilization of shared resources.