Technique for scheduling execution of jobs for or by network-connected devices

• US 20020198923A1
• Filed: 06/26/2001
• Published: 12/26/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 06/26/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Twitter Inc (X Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Hayes, Kent F. Jr.
• Granted Patent: US 6,993,763 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/102
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5038 considering the execution order of a plurality of tasks, e.g. taking priority or time dependency constraints into consideration scheduling strategies G06F9/4881 and subgroups
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/505 considering the load
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5055 considering software capabilities, i.e. software resources associated or available to the machine

Abstract

Methods, systems, computer program products, and methods of doing business by improving the scheduling of execution of jobs for or by network-connected devices, thereby enabling the job execution process to scale more easily, efficiently, and effectively to support large numbers of devices and/or users. Examples of jobs include, but are not limited to, distribution of resources (including software, configuration information, images, and other types of content) to a device, fetching a device'"'"'s inventory information, backing up a device'"'"'s contents, and so forth. Jobs are programmatically scheduled based upon a specified time internal, according to a class of the requester. Only if an earliest start time after which the job may be executed for this requester has been reached will the job be executed; otherwise, the job execution is delayed. The disclosed techniques lessen the need for additional servers to handle spikes in processing load, reduce the likelihood of reaching system overload, and reduce the likelihood of cascading failures that may occur when systems are overloaded.

Claims

1. A method of improving resource distribution to network-connected devices, comprising steps of:

determining whether a requester of a resource distribution job should receive the resource distribution job by computing an earliest time when the job is available to the requester; and

distributing the requested resource distribution job to the requester if so.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein class membership of a class of the requester is used in the determining step.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein the class membership is based upon a device type of a device of the requester.

4. The method according to claim 2, wherein the class membership is based upon software installed on a device of the requester.

5. The method according to claim 2, wherein the class membership is based upon one or more characteristics of users who may request the resource distribution job.

6. The method according to claim 2, wherein the class membership is based upon one or more characteristics of a device from which the job was requested.

7. The method according to claim 2, wherein the class membership is based upon one or more properties of a network connection over which the job was requested.

8. The method according to claim 7, wherein the properties of the network connection include (1) a bandwidth of the network connection and (2) a cost of the network connection.

9. The method according to claim 2, wherein the class membership is based upon one or more characteristics of an environment in which the job was requested.

10. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of installing resources of the resource distribution job on the requester.

11. The method according to claim 1, wherein class membership of a subclass of which the requester is a member is used in the determining step.

12. The method according to claim 1, wherein computing the earliest time uses an ordinal number associated with a device of the requester.

13. The method according to claim 1, wherein computing the earliest time uses a current time in microseconds of receiving the request for the resource distribution job.

14. The method according to claim 1, wherein computing the earliest time uses a random number.

16. The method according to claim 15, wherein a particular one of the jobs comprises fetching inventory information related to the requester'"'"'s computing device from that device.

18. The method according to claim 17, further comprising the step of requesting that the available job be performed for or by the particular device if the earliest time has been reached.

15. A method of improving scheduling of jobs for network-connected devices, comprising steps of:

determining whether a requester of a job should receive the job by computing an earliest time when the job is available to the requester, and

distributing the job to the requester if the earliest time has been reached.

17. A method of improving resource distribution to network-connected devices, comprising steps of:

determining whether a resource distribution job is available for a particular device;

determining an interval over which the available job may be performed; and

determining an earliest time in the interval when the job may be executed for the particular device.

19. A system for improving resource distribution to network-connected devices, comprising:

means for determining whether a requester of a resource distribution job should receive the resource distribution job by computing an earliest time when the job is available to the requester; and

means for distributing the requested resource distribution job to the requester if so.

20. A computer program product for improving resource distribution to network-connected devices, the computer program product embodied on one or more computer-usable media and comprising:

computer readable program code means for determining whether a requester of a resource distribution job should receive the resource distribution job by computing an earliest time when the job is available to the requester; and

computer readable program code means for distributing the requested resource distribution job to the requester if so.

21. A method of doing business by improving distribution of resources to network-connected devices , comprising steps of:

receiving one or more requests for resource distribution; and

processing each received request, further comprising steps of;

determining a class from which the request was received;

using the class to determine an earliest execution time for a requester from which the request was received; and

distributing the requested resource distribution to the requester if the earliest execution time has been reached.