CLOUD MESSAGE TRANSFER APPARATUS TO REDUCE NON-DELIVERY REPORTS
First Claim
1. An apparatus comprising:
- a circuit to receive electronic messages intended for a plurality of recipients and to respond to an end of data sequence with a type of SMTP status code when delivery status was mixed, coupled toa circuit to determine a delivery status of mixed when delivery was successful to at least one of the intended recipients and was not successful to at least one other of the intended recipients.
3 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
Duplicate deliveries of email messages are prevented when a transient failure prevents delivery to some of a plurality of intended recipients but delivery to an other one or more of the intended recipients is successful. After receiving a list of recipients, an email body, and an “end of data” sequence, but prior to responding to the “end of data” sequence, an email server determines a transient failure reply code when any one of the address mailboxes of intended recipients is not available. A message-memorandum, such as the globally unique message-id and the address of one or more successful recipients is stored into a memorandum store. A subsequent transmission of the corresponding message will only be delivered to recipients who have not previously received it. Using this invention, the receiving/relay system would persistently track which recipients were allowed or refused by some unique characteristic of the message, such as internet message ID or a checksum of the distinct portions of the message/envelope that are unlikely to change (e.g. sender, recipients, body). Once a message has been identified as one that has been previously partially deferred, the recipients that were previously allowed would be ignored and delivery would be attempted only to the recipients that had not previously been allowed.
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Citations
47 Claims
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1. An apparatus comprising:
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a circuit to receive electronic messages intended for a plurality of recipients and to respond to an end of data sequence with a type of SMTP status code when delivery status was mixed, coupled to a circuit to determine a delivery status of mixed when delivery was successful to at least one of the intended recipients and was not successful to at least one other of the intended recipients. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3)
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4. An apparatus comprising:
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a processor;
coupled toa message-memorandum store; a circuit to receive electronic messages intended for a plurality of intended recipients; a circuit to determine if a message is substantially similar to a previously received message, coupled to the circuit to receive electronic messages and coupled to the message-memorandum store. - View Dependent Claims (5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
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10. A system to handle mail as a cloud service comprising a hardware server coupled by a network interface to a wide area network and further coupled to a plurality of local or remote mail transfer agents determine if an incoming electronic mail addressed to a plurality of intended recipients is substantially similar to a previous message which was successfully delivered to at least one of but fewer than all of the previously intended recipients, and attempt delivery without duplication, and respond to the email sender'"'"'s end of data sequence with a reply code of type failure when delivery is successful to at least one of but fewer than all of the intended recipients.
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11. A computer-implemented method comprising
attempting to deliver an electronic message to a plurality of intended recipients prior to completing a DATA command dialog with a reply code; -
responding to an end of mail data sequence with a reply code of transient failure on the condition that delivery to one or more of the intended recipients was a transient failure; and storing into a memorandum store at least a message-memorandum for each intended recipient whose delivery was successful. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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21. A computer-implemented method for improved efficiency in handling electronic mail destined for recipients comprising
when an electronic mail session comprises a plurality of recipient commands: -
determining a message-memorandum, checking a memorandum store to determine the likelihood that the recipient has successfully received a substantially similar electronic mail, disposing of the electronic mail, determining a reply code, and responding to an end of mail data indication. - View Dependent Claims (22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36)
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37. An apparatus comprises
a network interface, coupled to a mail transfer command receiver, coupled to an “ - end of data”
response generator, coupled toa data store, and a delivery agent communicatively coupled to a plurality of recipient mailboxes. - View Dependent Claims (38, 39)
- end of data”
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40. A computer-implemented method for operating an email server comprising the steps following:
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receiving at least a first recipient and a second recipient; receiving DATA and an “
end of data”
sequence;determining the email status for each recipient from among the following; success, persistent transient failure, and permanent failure; transmitting a persistent transient failure code in response to the “
end of data”
sequence when the email delivery status for the respective recipients are one of success and persistent transient failure;transmitting a permanent failure code in response to the “
end of data”
sequence when the email delivery status for the respective recipients one of are success and permanent failure; andtransmitting a success code in response to the “
end of data”
sequence when the email status for the respective recipients uniformly successful. - View Dependent Claims (41, 42)
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43. A computer-implemented method for operating an electronic mail server comprising the steps following:
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receiving a plurality of recipients in an SMTP mail session; receiving DATA and an “
end of data”
sequence;determining the email delivery status for each recipient from among the following; success, persistent transient failure, and permanent failure; transmitting a persistent transient failure reply code in response to the “
end of data”
sequence when the email status for the recipients comprise no permanent failures and at least one persistent transient failure; andtransmitting a success reply code in response to the “
end of data”
sequence when the email delivery status for the recipients are uniformly successful. - View Dependent Claims (44, 45, 46)
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47. A software program product tangibly embodied on a non-transitory computer-readable storage device encoded with computer executable instructions:
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to receive simple mail transfer protocol commands, to check a database for delivery status of a message-id to each of a plurality of recipients, to deliver the message to available recipients which have not yet received the message, to update the database with the current status of message delivery, and to respond to an “
end of data”
sequence with a status code derived from the combination of status of delivery to each recipient.
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Specification