US 11,855,958 B2
Selection of an egress IP address for egress traffic of a distributed cloud computing network
Marek Przemyslaw Majkowski, Warsaw (PL); Braden Michael Ehrat, Monticello, IL (US); Sergi Isasi, San Francisco, CA (US); Dane Orion Knecht, Austin, TX (US); Dina Kozlov, San Francisco, CA (US); Rustam Xing Lalkaka, San Francisco, CA (US); Eric Reeves, Austin, TX (US); and Oliver Zi-gang Yu, Austin, TX (US)
Assigned to CLOUDFLARE, INC., San Francisco, CA (US)
Filed by CLOUDFLARE, INC., San Francisco, CA (US)
Filed on Sep. 6, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/903,828.
Application 17/903,828 is a continuation of application No. 17/409,535, filed on Aug. 23, 2021, granted, now 11,438,302.
Claims priority of provisional application 63/197,284, filed on Jun. 4, 2021.
Claims priority of provisional application 63/200,351, filed on Mar. 2, 2021.
Prior Publication US 2022/0417211 A1, Dec. 29, 2022
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. H04L 29/08 (2006.01); H04L 29/06 (2006.01); H04L 61/5007 (2022.01)
CPC H04L 61/5007 (2022.05) 18 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method, comprising:
mapping a plurality of egress IP addresses to one or more groupings, wherein the plurality of egress IP addresses are anycast IP addresses for which a plurality of compute servers of a distributed cloud computing network share, wherein the plurality of egress IP addresses are to be used as source IP addresses of the distributed cloud computing network when transmitting traffic to destinations external to the distributed cloud computing network, and wherein the map of the plurality of egress IP addresses to the one or more groupings is made available to destinations external to the distributed cloud computing network;
receiving, at a first compute server of the plurality of compute servers of the distributed cloud computing network, traffic originating from a client device that is destined to a destination external to the distributed cloud computing network, wherein the first compute server is part of a first data center;
selecting an IP address out of the plurality of egress IP addresses, wherein the selection is based on one or more characteristics applicable for the received traffic and the map of the plurality of egress IP addresses to the one or more groupings;
determining that an exit data center is expected to receive return traffic for the received traffic originating from the client device that is destined to the destination external to the distributed cloud computing network, wherein the exit data center is different from the first data center;
proxying the received traffic from the first data center to the exit data center; and
transmitting the received traffic to the destination external to the distributed cloud computing network, wherein the transmitted traffic uses the selected IP address as a source IP address.