2D WEB TRILATERATION

• US 20110210887A1
• Filed: 02/26/2010
• Published: 09/01/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 02/27/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: The 41st Parameter, Inc. (Experian plc)
• Original Assignee: The 41st Parameter, Inc. (Experian plc)
• Inventors: Yalov, Raz, Pandich, Steve, Eisen, Ori
• Granted Patent: US 8,779,981 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 342/357.25
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 5/0009 Transmission of position information to remote stations involving assistance data G01S5/0236
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 5/06 Position of source determined by co-ordinating a plurality of position lines defined by path-difference measurements G01S5/12 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/029 Location-based management or tracking services

Abstract

The invention provides systems and methods of locating a network device based on the time latency between a request by a user device and the receipt of the request by a plurality of satellite servers provided at different locations. Preferably three or more satellites may be employed. The request may be for an item, which may have a known file size, and which may or may not exist. Triangulation techniques may be utilized to determine the location of the device relative to the satellite servers.

Claims

1. A system for determining the physical location of a device, comprising:

a user device, configured to request to receive an item;

a plurality of satellite servers, wherein each satellite server is configured to receive the item request; and

a master server, configured to determine the physical location of the user device based on relative locations of the satellite servers and relative times that the satellite servers received the item request using a triangulation technique.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the satellite servers are time synchronized.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein a time offset between the satellite servers are tracked.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein each of the plurality of satellite servers has a local server clock and creates a timestamp based on the local server clock time when the item request is received.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the item request is ate least one of the following:

a GET request, a POST request, a file request, or an image request.

6. A method of determining the physical location of a device, comprising:

sending a resource request from a network device;

receiving, at three or more satellite servers, the resource request;

determining times when each of three or more satellite servers receives the resource request; and

determining the physical location of the network device based on the relative locations of the satellite servers and times when each of the satellite servers received the resource request using a triangulation technique.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the times when each of three or more satellite servers receives the resource request are determined by:

a master server polling the three or more satellite servers, or the satellite servers informing the master server that the request was received.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the master server determines the amount of time it took for the resource request to travel from the network device to the three or more satellite servers based on the times the satellite servers received the resource request, and correlates the amount of time it took for the resource request to travel with distances between the network device and the satellite servers.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the correlation is a linear correlation.

10. The method of claim 6, wherein at least two of the three or more satellite servers are in a different time zone.

11. The method of claim 6, wherein the resource request is sent from the network device to the three or more satellite servers at the same time.

12. A method of determining the physical location of a device, comprising:

determining an amount of time it took for each of three or more satellite servers to receive a resource request from a network device; and

determining the physical location of the network device based on the relative locations of the satellite servers and the amount of time for each of the satellite servers to receive the resource request using a triangulation technique.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising the step of performing a calibration step to determine network latency.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the calibration step includes determining the amount of time it takes for a known file size to travel to a second known location from a first known location.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the first known location is the network device location and the second known location is a satellite server location.

16. The method of claim 12, wherein the amount of time it took for each of three or more satellite servers to receive a resource request is determined based on calculating the difference between the time the resource request was by the network device, and the times that the network device received a response to the resource request from the satellite servers.

17. A device geo-location system comprising:

a first satellite server configured to receive a time request from a client device;

a second satellite server configured to receive a time request from the client device;

a third satellite server configured to receive a time request from the client device;

a location calculator for determining the geo-location of the client device based on the relative geo-locations of the first, second, and third satellite servers and the amount of time it took for the first, second, and third satellite servers to receive the time requests from the client device.

18. The device of claim 17 further comprising a host in communication with the client device, and performing an electronic transaction with the client device.

19. The device of claim 18, wherein a user of the client device is accessing the host through a website with embedded links corresponding to the first, second, and third satellite servers.

20. The device of claim 17, wherein a time request includes a request for a globally unique identifier (GUID).

21. The device of claim 17, wherein the amount of time it took for the first, second, and third satellite servers to receive the time requests is calculated by taking the difference between the time that the first, second, and third satellite servers received the request as measured by clocks at the satellite servers and a request reference time.

22. The device of claim 21, wherein the request reference time is the time that the request was made by the client device as measured by a clock on the client device.

23. The device of claim 22, wherein the amount of time it took for the first, second, and third satellite servers to receive the time requests is calculated by accounting for an offset between the clocks of satellite servers and the clock of the client device.