System and method for providing gracefully degraded services on the internet under overloaded conditions

• US 20020174219A1
• Filed: 05/21/2001
• Published: 11/21/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 05/21/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Twitter Inc (X Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Wu, Kun-Lung, Yu, Philip Shi-Lung, Mei, Mark Gee-Gwo
• Granted Patent: US 7,000,013 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5025 by proactively reacting to service quality change, e.g. by reconfiguration after service quality degradation or upgrade
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0852 Delays
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/10 Flow control; Congestion control
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/11 Identifying congestion
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers

Abstract

An arrangement for providing gracefully degraded services on the Internet under overloaded conditions, involving tagging user request to indicate the status of said request and providing appropriate level of degraded services gracefully responsive to said tagging information.

Claims

1. A method for providing gracefully degraded services on the Internet under overloaded conditions, comprising the steps of

a) tagging user requests to indicate the status of said requests;

b) providing appropriate level of degraded services gracefully responsive to said tagging information.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the said step of tagging user requests is implemented through “

cookies”

, where “

cookies”

are messages carried in the header of an HTTP request.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the status of user requests is explicitly embedded in the tag.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the status of user requests is implicitly encoded in the tag and then the actual information can be looked up with said tag from a database.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein said level of gracefully degraded services is based on user profile information.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein said level of gracefully degraded services is based on the degree of resource utilization.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein said level of gracefully degraded services is based on previously promised commitment to said user.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein said degraded services is in the form of delayed services.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein said degraded services is in the form of lesser quality services.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein said degraded services includes a compensation.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein said degraded services is a combination of delayed service, a lesser quality content and compensation.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein said level of gracefully degraded services can be further based on club membership specified in the user profile.

13. The method of claim 8, further comprising the steps of:

a) determining if the request is a first time request;

b) if not a first time request, determining if the request arrives as previously suggested.

14. In claim 8, delayed services further comprising the step of examining user profile.

15. In claim 8, delayed services further comprising the step of examining the previously promised services.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein the said means for tagging user requests is implemented through “

cookies”

, where “

cookies”

are messages carried in the header of an HTTP request.

18. The method of claim 16 wherein the status of user requests is explicitly embedded in the tag.

19. The method of claim 16 wherein the status of user requests is implicitly encoded in the tag and then the actual information can be looked up with said tag from a database.

16. A system for providing gracefully degraded services under overloaded conditions, comprising:

(a) means for tagging user requests to indicate the status of said requests;

(b) means for providing an appropriate level of degraded services gracefully responsive to said tagging information.

20. A memory medium for a system comprising:

means for controlling the system operation to perform the following steps;

(a) tagging user requests to indicate the status of said requests;

(b) providing appropriate level of degraded services gracefully responsive to said tagging information.