Network Communication and Cost Awareness

• US 20130067061A1
• Filed: 09/09/2011
• Published: 03/14/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 09/09/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Rao, Ravi T., Thaler, David G., Ritz, Andrew J., Khalid, Suhail, Corradini, Alexander, Ziller, Michael A.
• Granted Patent: US 9,344,335 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1421 Indication of expected costs
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0893 Assignment of logical groups to network elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0894 Policy-based network configuration management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0896 Bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities flow or congestion control using dynamic resource allocation, e.g. in-call renegotiation, H04L47/76
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0876 Network utilisation, e.g. volume of load or congestion level
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/16 Threshold monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/20 for managing network security; network security policies in general filtering policies H04L63/0227
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/34 involving the movement of software or configuration parameters network booting or remote initial program loading [RIPL] G06F9/4416
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/321 Interlayer communication protocols or service data unit [SDU] definitions; Interfaces between layers
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/237 Communication with additional data server
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/23805 Controlling the feeding rate to the network, e.g. by controlling the video pump
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2743 Video hosting of uploaded data from client
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44204 Monitoring of content usage, e.g. the number of times a movie has been viewed, copied or the amount which has been watched monitoring of user activities for profile generation for accessing a video database G06F16/739; protecting generic digital content where the protection is independent of the precise nature of the content G06F21/10; arrangements for monitoring the use made of the broadcast services in broadcast systems H04H60/31
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44209 Monitoring of downstream path of the transmission network originating from a server, e.g. bandwidth variations of a wireless network arrangements for maintenance or administration in data switching networks involving bandwidth and capacity management H04L41/0896
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6181 involving transmission via a mobile phone network arrangements for providing broadcast or conference services to substation in data switching networks in combination with wireless systems H04L12/189; wireless uplink channel access H04W74/004

Abstract

Network communication and cost awareness techniques are described. In one or more implementations, functionality is exposed through one or more application programming interfaces (APIs) that is accessible to a plurality of applications of the computing device to perform network communication. Data is returned to one or more of the plurality of applications regarding a cost network used to perform the network communication.

Claims

1. A method implemented by a computing device, the method comprising:

exposing functionality through one or more application programming interfaces (APIs) that is accessible to a plurality of applications of the computing device to perform network communication; and

returning data to one or more of the plurality of applications regarding a cost network used to perform the network communication.

2. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the exposing and the returning are performed by a download manager or an operating system of the computing device.

3. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the data relates to a cost threshold associated with the cost network.

4. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the data returned to the at least one said application relates to use of the cost network by the plurality of applications.

5. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the functionality is accessible to perform an upload or download for a respective said application while at least a portion of the application is in a suspended state.

6. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the functionality is configured to operate in a same security context as a respective said application for which the network communication is performed.

7. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the data is configured to notify a respective said application of a progress of a download.

8. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the functionality is configured to hook into a stream layer to support progressive download and playback.

9. A method as described in claim 8, wherein the progressive download and playback composes data as downloaded via the cost network into a streaming layer for consumption by a respective said application.

10. A method implemented by a computing device, the method comprising:

exposing functionality through one or more application programming interfaces (APIs) of an operating system that are accessible to a plurality of applications of the computing device to perform network communication; and

managing the functionality to perform network communication by the operating system using one or more policies.

11. A method as described in claim 10, wherein at least one said policy is configured to cause the operating system to manage the functionality based on one or more power consumption considerations.

12. A method as described in claim 10, wherein at least one said policy is configured to cause the operating system to manage a rate of a download.

13. A method as described in claim 10, wherein at least one said policy is configured to manage a download based on availability of particular networks.

14. A method as described in claim 10, wherein at least one said policy is configured to cause the operating system to coalesce downloads for the plurality of applications.

15. A method as described in claim 14, wherein the downloads are coalesced to cause a plurality of downloads to be performed in parallel for the plurality of applications.

16. A method as described in claim 10, wherein the functionality is configured to perform the network communication for a respective said application while at least a portion of the application is in a suspended state.

17. A method as described in claim 10, wherein the functionality is configured to pause and resume a download.

18. A method as described in claim 17, wherein the functionality is configured to resume the download for a one-time uniform resource locator (URL).

19. One or more computer-readable storage media comprising instructions stored thereon that, responsive to execution by a computing device, causes the computing device to implement an operating system configured to expose functionality via one or more application programming interfaces (APIs) to a plurality of applications of the computing device to perform a download via a cost network while at least a portion of a respective said application that requested communication is in a suspended state.

20. One or more computer-readable storage media as described in claim 19, wherein the operating system is configured to return data to the respective said application that describes usage of the cost network by the plurality of applications.