Mobile station with expanded storage space and method of retrieving files by the mobile station

• US 20080250024A1
• Filed: 04/06/2007
• Published: 10/09/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 04/06/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: RPX Corporation
• Original Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Rastogi, Rajeev, Srinivasan, Anand, Sr, Jeyashankher, Kvm, Naidu
• Granted Patent: US 9,171,006 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/10
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/172 Caching, prefetching or hoarding of files
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1095 Replication or mirroring of data, e.g. scheduling or transport for data synchronisation between network nodes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/5681 Pre-fetching or pre-delivering data based on network characteristics

Abstract

Disclosed is a mobile station having an expanded storage space, and a method of retrieving a file stored in a remote storage server. The method may include determining whether the file is locally stored or remotely stored, deleting files in a local storage to provide space if the file is determined to reside in a remote storage server, downloading the file from a remote storage server over the Internet by prefetching a portion of the file from the remote storage server, and opening the prefetched portion of the file while concurrently downloading a remaining portion of the file from the remote storage server.

Claims

1. A method of retrieving a file, comprising:

determining whether the file is locally stored or remotely stored;

deleting files in a local storage to provide space if the file is determined to reside in a remote storage server and insufficient space exists in the local storage for the file;

downloading the file from a remote storage server by prefetching a portion of the file from the remote storage server; and

opening the prefetched portion of the file while concurrently downloading a remaining portion of the file from the remote storage server.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

retrieving the file from the local storage if the file is locally stored.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the portion of the file is prefetched from the remote storage server without deleting files in the local storage if there is sufficient space in the local storage for the file.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein deleting the files in the local storage is based on at least one of a reactive cache-update scheme, a proactive cache update, a pre-fetching scheme, and a minimize access time caching scheme.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein downloading of the file from the remote storage sever is conducted wirelessly.

6. A mobile station adapted to access files in a remote storage server, comprising:

a file downloader/uploader (FDU) configured to communicate with a remote storage server; and

a driver configured to determine whether a file is locally stored or remotely stored, to delete files in a local storage to provide space if the file is remotely stored and insufficient space exists in the local storage for the file, and the driver further configured to prefetch a portion of the file from the remote storage server, and to open the prefetch portion of the file while concurrently downloading a remaining portion of the file from the remote storage server via the FDU.

7. The mobile station of claim 6, further comprising:

a cache manager configured to cache files in the local storage based on a caching scheme.

8. The mobile station of claim 7, wherein the cache manager further comprises:

a statistic collector configured to collect access patterns to determined which of the files are to be cached in the local storage.

9. The mobile station of claim 8, wherein the statistic collector uses at least one of a reactive cache-update scheme, a proactive cache update, a pre-fetching scheme, a minimize access time caching scheme.

10. The mobile station of claim 6, further comprising:

a cache manager configured to delete files in the local storage based on a caching scheme.

11. The mobile station of claim 6, further comprising:

a file transfer call classifier (FTCC) configured to determine which file system calls are to be handled by the driver.

12. The mobile station of claim 6, further comprising:

a plurality of user applications, each of the plurality of user applications configured to invoke an operation on the file.

13. The mobile station of claim 6, where the mobile station is configured to support Java or Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW).

14. The mobile station of claim 13, further comprising:

a plurality of application program interfaces (APIs), each of the plurality of APIs configured to invoke an operation on the file.

15. The mobile station of claim 13, wherein the driver is a user interface (UI) component.

16. The mobile station of claim 15, wherein the UI component is configured to access a root directory on the remote storage server.