VIRTUAL CHANNEL JOINING

• US 20140250204A1
• Filed: 07/17/2013
• Published: 09/04/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 03/04/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Open Garden Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Open Garden Incorporated
• Inventors: Shalunov, Stanislav, Hazel, Gregory, Benoliel, Micha
• Granted Patent: US 9,705,957 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/217
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1008 based on parameters of servers, e.g. available memory or workload monitoring of computer activity G06F11/30
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1023 based on a hash applied to IP addresses or costs
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/104 Peer-to-peer [P2P] networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/14 Multichannel or multilink protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 74/02 Hybrid access
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/15 Setup of multiple wireless link connections
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/06 adapted for operation in multiple networks or having at least two operational modes, e.g. multi-mode terminals

Abstract

Methods for establishing connection to the Internet using multiple channels. A device takes advantage of several channels available to it internally and/or from neighboring devices to request the various resources of the webpage, and assembles the webpage using the resources arriving from the different channels. When a device has the ability to connect to the Internet using multiple internal channels, the device uses internal heuristics to request the webpage resources using these channels. A cloud exit server may be used to enhance security and to handle requests that may not be handled using multiple channels.

Claims

1. A process embodied in a processor readable code that, when executed causes a computing device to perform the steps comprising:

a. establish and simultaneously maintain multiple connections to a plurality of other devices, thereby establishing a plurality of communication channels;

b. obtain a plurality of web resources by sending a plurality of resource requests to a target device, wherein at least two of the plurality of requests are sent over two different communication channels of the plurality of communication channels.

2. The process of claim 1, wherein maintain multiple connections comprises maintaining unique IP address for each communication channel.

3. The process of claim 1, wherein at least one of the plurality of resource requests is encapsulated prior to its transmission.

4. The process of claim 3, wherein the encapsulated request is sent to a cloud exit server to be decapsulated and forwarded to the target device by the cloud exit server.

5. The process of claim 1, wherein at least one of the plurality of web resource requests comprises an HTTP range request, specifying a part of a file to be sent to the computing device.

6. The process of claim 1, wherein the computing device sends equal number of requests over each one of the plurality of communication channels.

7. The process of claim 1, wherein the computing device weighs requests by number of bytes in each request and balances the number of bytes sent over each one of the communication channels.

8. The process of claim 1, wherein the computing device maintains an estimate of past performance of each one of the plurality of communication channels and weighs number of bytes to be sent over each one of the plurality of communication channels according to the corresponding estimate of past performance.

9. The process of claim 1, wherein the computing device maintains an estimate of past performance of each one of the plurality of communication channels and weighs number of requests to be sent over each one of the plurality of communication channels according to the corresponding estimate of past performance.

10. The process of claim 1, wherein the computing device maintains an estimate of usage cost of each one of the plurality of communication channels and weighs number of requests to be sent over each one of the plurality of communication channels according to the corresponding estimate of usage cost.

11. The process of claim 1, wherein the computing device further sends a request to a server to obtains connection information for at least one of the plurality of other devices.

12. The process of claim 1, wherein one of the plurality of other devices comprises a smartphone and one of the plurality of other devices comprises a WiFi router.

13. The process of claim 12, wherein at least one of the plurality of resource requests is sent to the Internet via the smartphone.

14. The process of claim 1, wherein one of the plurality of communication channels is established over cellular network and one of the plurality of communication channels is established over WiFi transmission.

15. The process of claim 1, wherein one of the plurality of communication channels is established over cellular network and one of the plurality of communication channels is established over Bluetooth.

16. The process of claim 12, wherein at least one of the plurality of resource requests is sent to the Internet via the Bluetooth.

17. A system for enabling multi-channel communication with a mobile device, the mobile device having a user application running therein, the system comprising:

a main application residing on a network-connected server, the main application causing the server to perform the process comprising;

receiving an encapsulated request sent from the mobile device and determining originating address of the request;

decapsulating the encapsulated request to obtain a decapsulated request and determining target address from the decapsulated request to determine a target of the decapsulated request;

sending the decapsulated request to the target using the target address;

receiving a response to the decapsulated request from the target; and

,

forwarding the response to the mobile device using the originating address.

18. The system according to claim 17, wherein determining originating address of the request is performed after decapsulating the encapsulated request.

19. The system according to claim 18, further comprising:

a client application residing on the mobile device, the client application causing the mobile device to perform the process comprising;

intercepting a request generated by the user application;

analyzing the request to determine whether the request is decipherable and can be handled by the client application;

when the request is not decipherable, encapsulating the request inside an encapsulation packet, wherein the encapsulated request contains the source address and the target address and the encapsulation packet contains address of the network-connected server; and

,

sending the encapsulated request to the network-connected server.

20. The system according to claim 19, wherein when the request is decipherable, sending the request to the target address.

21. The system according to claim 19, wherein when the request is decipherable as being an idempotent request, sending the request to the target address a plurality of times using a plurality of channels.

22. The system according to claim 19, wherein when the request is decipherable, splitting the request into a plurality of sub-requests and sending the plurality of sub-requests to the target address using a plurality of channels.

23. The system according to claim 19, wherein when the request is decipherable, sending the requests to the target address and, when a reply to the request is received, storing at least part of the reply in a cache memory.

24. The system according to claim 23, further comprising receiving a forward request from a second mobile device and determining whether a reply to the forward request is stored in the cache memory of the mobile device and, if so, sending the reply to the second mobile device without forwarding the forward request.

25. The system according to claim 19, wherein when the request is decipherable, sending the requests to the target address via a second mobile device and, when a reply to the request is received in the second mobile device, storing at least part of the reply in a cache memory of the second mobile device.

26. The system according to claim 19, wherein when the request is decipherable, sending the requests to the target address via a second mobile device and, when the request is received by the second mobile device, determining whether a reply to the request is stored in a cache memory of the second mobile device and, if so, fetching the reply from the cache of the second mobile device and sending the rely to the originating mobile device.

27. The system according to claim 19, wherein when the request is decipherable to contain a plurality of sub-requests, determining whether replies to at least one of the sub-requests is stored in the cache memory and, if so, providing the reply to the user application and sending remainder sub-requests to the target address.

28. The system according to claim 27, wherein the plurality of sub-requests are sent via a plurality of communications channels and wherein at least one of the communication channels comprises an ad-hoc connection to a second mobile device.

29. A process embodied in a processor readable code that, when executed causes a computing device to perform the steps comprising:

receiving a communication request on an OSI IP layer;

analyzing the request to classify the request and determine whether it can be handled on a higher OSI layer;

when the request cannot be handled on a higher level, sending the request over the IP layer;

when the request can be handled on a higher level, sending the request over the higher OSI layer.

30. The process of claim 29, wherein analyzing the request comprises determining the request'"'"'s port number, the request'"'"'s type of packets, and the request'"'"'s content.

31. The process of claim 29, wherein when it is determined that the request can be handled over an OSI application layer, sending the request and a duplicate of the request over multiple communications channels.

32. The process of claim 29, wherein when the request is classified as an HTTP request, sending the request over multiple communications channels at the application layer.

33. The process of claim 29, wherein when it is determined that the request cannot be handled at a higher OSI layer, encapsulating the request by including a target address and an originating address in the encapsulated request and having a web exit address of a cloud exit server on encapsulation of the request, enabling the cloud exit sever to decapsulate the request and forward the request using the target address.

34. The process of claim 33, further comprising encrypting the request.

35. The process of claim 33, wherein encapsulating the request comprises placing a packet of the request having a source address and a target address inside an encapsulation packet having a cloud exit server address.

36. The process of claim 33, wherein encapsulating the request comprises breaking packet of the request into multiple sub-packets, and placing each sub-packet with a source address and a target address inside an encapsulation packet having a cloud exit server address, thereby generating multiple encapsulated requests.

37. The process of claim 36, wherein the multiple encapsulated requests are sent over multiple communication channels.