METHOD FOR ALLOWING DISTRIBUTED RUNNING OF AN APPLICATION AND RELATED DEVICE AND INFERENCE ENGINE

• US 20120102098A1
• Filed: 10/21/2011
• Published: 04/26/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 10/22/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Orange S.A.
• Original Assignee: Orange S.A.
• Inventors: Vennegues, Elise, Guillou, Aurèlien, Bhatia, Hernit, Pelendage, Nishantha
• Granted Patent: US 9,323,583 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5083 Techniques for rebalancing the load in a distributed system

Abstract

Method for allowing distributed running of an application between a device and a server connected via a network. The method includes the following steps carried out by the device: obtaining a device profile including resource capacity characteristics of the device; obtaining an application profile including resource consumption characteristics of the application; obtaining device metrics relating to real-time resource usage with respect to the device; obtaining offload rules defining conditions under which an application is to be run at least in part on a server and/or on a device, the conditions involving device resource capacity, application resource consumption and device real-time resource usage; and making a decision by an inference engine to run the application at least in part on the server and/or on the device, by evaluating the offload rules applied to the device profile, application profile and device metrics.

Claims

1. A method for allowing distributed running of an application between a device and a server connected via a network, the method comprising the following steps carried out by the device:

obtaining a device profile including resource capacity characteristics of said device;

obtaining an application profile including resource consumption characteristics of said application;

obtaining device metrics relating to real-time resource usage with respect to said device;

obtaining offload rules defining conditions under which an application is to be run at least in part on a server and/or on a device, the conditions involving device resource capacity, application resource consumption and device real-time resource usage; and

making a decision by an inference engine to run said application at least in part on said server and/or on said device, by evaluating the offload rules applied to said device profile, application profile and device metrics.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the application profile is obtained from a pre-processing unit arranged for performing analysis of a code of said application.

3. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the application profile is received responsive to the device requesting downloading of said application.

4. The method as in claim 1, wherein the device is provided with the offload rules by an operator of the network.

5. The method as claimed in claim 4, wherein the offload rules depend on a type of subscription a user of the device has with the network.

6. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the device is provided with the device profile by a manufacturer of the device.

7. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein device resource capacity, application resource consumption and/or device real-time resource usage relate to at least one of the following resources:

processing resource, random access memory, storage memory, power or network bandwidth.

8. The method as claimed in claim 1, further comprising, when the decision made by the inference engine is to run at least part of said application on the server, offloading said application part to the server.

9. The method as claimed in claim 8, wherein offloading said application part to the server is performed by taking into account on which conditions defined by the offload rules the decision to run said application part on the server was made by the inference engine.

10. A device for allowing distributed running of an application between the device and a server connected via a network, the device comprising:

a unit configured to obtain a device profile including resource capacity characteristics of said device;

a unit configured to obtain an application profile including resource consumption characteristics of said application;

a unit configured to obtain device metrics relating to real-time resource usage with respect to said device;

a unit configured to obtain offload rules defining conditions under which an application is to be run at least in part on a server and/or on a device, the conditions involving device resource capacity, application resource consumption and device real-time resource usage; and

an inference engine configured to make a decision to run said application at least in part on said server and/or on said device, by evaluating the offload rules applied to said device profile, application profile and device metrics.

11. An inference engine for use in cooperation with a device arranged for allowing distributed running of an application between the device and a server connected via a network and comprising a unit for obtaining a device profile including resource capacity characteristics of said device, a unit for obtaining an application profile including resource consumption characteristics of said application, a unit for obtaining device metrics relating to real-time resource usage with respect to said device, and a unit for obtaining offload rules defining conditions under which an application is to be run at least in part on a server and/or on a device, the conditions involving device resource capacity, application resource consumption and device real-time resource usage, wherein the inference engine is arranged to make a decision to run said application at least in part on said server and/or on said device, by evaluating the offload rules applied to said device profile, application profile and device metrics.