Store and forward architecture

• US 20060101153A1
• Filed: 12/27/2005
• Published: 05/11/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 05/09/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Comcast Cable Communications Management LLC (Comcast Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Allan Lodberg, Antoine Boucher, Brent Elphick, Peter Coumans, Peter Scheyen, Vasanthan Gunaratnam
• Inventors: Boucher, Antoine, Gunaratnam, Vasanthan, Coumans, Peter, Scheyen, Peter, Elphick, Brent, Lodberg, Allan
• Granted Patent: US 7,577,703 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/232
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/61 taking into account QoS or priority requirements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/62 Establishing a time schedule for servicing the requests
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols

Abstract

A store and forward (S&F) architecture is provided that supports multiple applications within an extensible network to direct information of various formats to any of multiple destinations. In the presently preferred embodiment of the invention, Java applications running on a client send non-priority data to any server on the application network or, alternatively, anywhere on a global telecommunications network such as the Internet, at some time in the future. In the preferred embodiment, S&F allows a client application to send usage statistics to a database on the application network. It also enables T-commerce purchases to be made by the user, where the purchase and other relevant information is sent to a destination web server as if the purchase had taken place on the web via a full web browser on an Internet-connected PC.

Claims

1. A method for operating a store and forward (S&

F) system, comprising;

waiting, by an S&

F proxy, to send an acknowledgement (ACK) message, until completion or timeout of an S&

F transaction, if an ACK flag is set in a header of a data message from a client;

upon completion within a predetermined time and if the ACK flag is set, sending a result message from the S&

F proxy to the client;

upon not completing the S&

F transaction with the predetermined time and if the ACK flag is set, sending the ACK message from the S&

F proxy to the client and storing the data message; and

upon completion or timeout and if the RESULT flag is set, sending the result message from the S&

F proxy to the client.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

upon receiving a duplicate data message from the client and if the ACK flag is set, sending the ACK message from the S&

F proxy to the client.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

the client creating an S&

F object for an S&

F application programming interface (API); and

sending the data message via the S&

F API from the client to the S&

F proxy.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

storing the data message in memory.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

upon unsuccessfully sending the data message, attempting to send the data message to the client again by the S&

F proxy and storing the data message to a database.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

upon successfully sending the data message, purging the data message from the database by the S&

F proxy.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

waiting, by the S&

F proxy, to purge the S&

F transaction, if a DONE flag in the header is set.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

sending a done message by the client to the S&

F proxy, if the DONE flag in the header is set.

9. A store and forward (S&

F) system, comprising;

a client to send a data message via a radio frequency (RF) network, the data message including a header, the header including an acknowledgement (ACK) flag and a RESULT flag; and

an S&

F proxy (1) to receive the data message from the client,

(2) to wait to send an ACK message to the client, until completion of the S&

F transaction or timeout and if an ACK flag is set,

(3) to send a result message to the client, upon completion of the S&

F transaction within a predetermined time, if the ACK flag is set,

(4) to send the ACK message to the client and to store the data message, upon not completing the S&

F transaction within a predetermined time and if the ACK flag is set, and

(5) to send the result message to the client, upon completion of the S&

F transaction or timeout and if the RESULT flag is set.

10. The S&

F system of claim 9, further comprising;

an Internet protocol (IP) network to receive IP messages from the S&

F proxy; and

an application server to receive data from the S&

F proxy via the IP network.

11. The S&

F system of claim 9, wherein the client further comprises;

a client software component; and

an operating system.

12. The S&

F system of claim 11, wherein the client software component further comprises;

a client application;

a statistics application programming interface (API) to provide services to the client application; and

an S&

F API to send messages to the application server.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the client creates an S&

F object for the S&

F API and sends the data message to the S&

F proxy by calling the S&

F API.

14. The system of claim 9, wherein upon receiving a duplicate data message from the client and if the ACK flag is set, the S&

F proxy sends the ACK message to the client.

15. The system of claim 9, wherein upon unsuccessfully sending the data message, the S&

F proxy attempts to send the data message to the client again and stores the data message to a database.

16. The system of claim 9, wherein upon successfully sending the data message, the S&

F proxy purges the data message from the database.

17. The system of claim 9, wherein the S&

F proxy waits to purge the S&

F transaction, if a DONE flag in the header is set.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the client sends a done message to the S&

F proxy, if the DONE flag in the header is set.

19. A computer readable medium storing instructions for performing a method for operating a store and forward system, the method comprising:

waiting, by an S&

F proxy, to send an acknowledgement (ACK) message, until completion or timeout of an S&

F transaction, if an ACK flag is set in a header of a data message from a client;

upon completion of the S&

F transaction within a predetermined time and if the ACK flag is set, sending a result message from the S&

F proxy to the client;

upon not completing the S&

F transaction with the predetermined time and if the ACK flag is set, sending the ACK message from the S&

F proxy to the client and storing the data message; and

upon completion of the S&

F transaction or timeout and if the RESULT flag is set, sending the result message from the S&

F proxy to the client.

20. The computer readable medium of claim 19, further comprising:

upon receiving a duplicate data message from the client and if the ACK flag is set, sending the ACK message from the S&

F proxy to the client.