Method and apparatus for integrating narrowband and wideband data transports

• US 6,665,711 B1
• Filed: 09/12/2000
• Issued: 12/16/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/1998
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Unwired Planet LLC (JP Morgan Chase & Co)
• Original Assignee: Openwave Systems Incorporated (JP Morgan Chase & Co)
• Inventors: King, Peter F., Liao, Hanqing, Boyle, Stephen S., Fox, Mark A., Ramasubraman, Seetharaman, Schwartz, Bruce V., Martin, Jr., Bruce K.
• Primary Examiner(s): VU, VIET DUY
• Application Number:
  US09/613,580
• Time in Patent Office: 1,190 Days
• Field of Search: 709/204, 709/206, 709/202, 709/203, 709/217, 709/219, 709/223, 709/224, 709/313, 709/328, 709/329, 709/225
• US Class Current: 709/219
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]

Abstract

The present invention has particular applications to the navigation of Internet web pages using two-way interactive communication devices, such as a mobile device, a mobile phone, a landline telephone, and an Internet capable remote controller. According to one aspect of the present invention, each of the two-way interactive communication devices is a node in a distributed network, thus the devices can access hypermedia or hierarchic layers of information stored in server devices on the network. When one or more pages of information are updated, rather than sending the entire updated information to users of the devices subscribing to the updated information through the network, the present invention sends a notification to a proxy server that forwards the notification to the users using a messaging system via a low cost narrowband channel. Upon receiving the notification, the users can fetch the updates, when needed, through a wideband channel. Hence systemic solutions are provided in the present invention to integrate wideband and narrowband channels so as to keep the users informed of any updates to their desired information and meanwhile provide efficient means to the users for retrieving the latest updates without incurring uncontrollable costs and increasing unnecessary network traffics.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving a notification at a link system coupling a landline data network to a wireless network when information at a remote network server is updated, wherein the remote network server is remote with respect to the link system, and wherein the information is available to a remote client device via a first channel;

identifying in the link system the remote client device as being associated with the notification; and

sending a message corresponding to the notification from the link system to the remote client device via a second channel in response to the notification, to indicate that the information has been updated, the second channel having a bandwidth smaller than a bandwidth of the first channel, wherein the message sent to the remote client device comprises an address identifying the information updated at the remote network server;

receiving a request from the remote client device, the request including an indication of the address; and

forwarding the updated information to the remote client device via the first channel in response to the request.

2. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein the remote client device is a mobile device operating on the wireless network, wherein the remote network server operates on a landline data network.

3. A method as recited in claim 2, further comprising maintaining a user account associated with the remote client device, wherein said identifying comprises using a subscriber identifier in the notification to extract a client device identifier from the user account.

4. A method as recited in claim 1, further comprising fetching the updated information from the remote network server.

5. A method as recited in claim 4, further comprising providing the updated information to the remote client device via the first channel.

6. A method as recited in claim 4, further comprising:

receiving a request from the remote client device to establish a communication session via the wideband channel;

authenticating the remote client device; and

forwarding the updated information to the remote client device via the first channel.

7. A method as recited in claim 1, further comprising maintaining a queue of notifications received from one or more remote network servers, wherein information in each of the notifications is to be delivered to one of a plurality of remote client devices.

8. A method as recited in claim 7, further comprising

assigning a sequence number to the received notification prior to sending the message to the client device;

and

storing the received notification in the queue of notifications according to the sequence number.

9. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein the notification further comprises an action type, the action type for use in causing the remote client device to react to the notification upon the remote client device receiving the message.

11. A method as recited in claim 9, further comprising causing an alert message to be generated with respect to the action type to inform a user of the remote client device of the information updated at the network server.

12. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein the address comprises a Uniform Resource Locator.

13. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein sending the message corresponding to the notification comprises:

assigning a notification identifier to the notification; and

transforming the notification along with the assigned notification identifier to the message so that the message is transportable in the narrowband channel.

14. A method as recited in claim 13, wherein the message comprises a PUSH protocol data unit (PDU).

15. A method as recited in claim 13, wherein said transforming comprises encoding at least part of the notification message into a format transportable by a message system according to a predefined encoding/decoding scheme.

16. A method as recited in claim 13, wherein said transforming comprises encoding the message in a short message service (SMS) format.

10. A method comprising:

receiving a notification at a link system coupling a landline data network to a wireless network when information at a remote network server is updated, wherein the remote network server is remote with respect to the link system, and wherein the information is available to a remote client device via a first channel;

identifying in the link system the remote client device as being associated with the notification; and

sending a message corresponding to the notification from the link system to the remote client device via a second channel in response to the notification, to indicate that the information has been updated, the second channel having a bandwidth smaller than a bandwidth of the first channel; and

causing a cached copy of the information in the remote client device to be invalidated, so as to cause the updated specific information to be fetched when the cached copy is accessed by a user of the remote client device.

45. A method as recited in claim 10, wherein the first channel and the second channel are both implemented at least partially on the wireless network.

17. An intermediary network node for use in an infrastructure coupling a wireless network to a landline network, the intermediary network node comprising:

a messenger to receive a notification that information on a web server on the landline network has been updated, the information being subscribed by a client device on the wireless network, and to generate, in response to the notification, a corresponding message for delivery to the client device via a narrowband channel to indicate the information has been updated; and

a pull engine to obtain the updated information from the web server in response to a request from the client device and to provide the updated information to the client device via a wideband channel.

18. An intermediary network node as recited in claim 17, wherein the intermediary network node comprises a proxy server to proxy requests and responses to the requests between a plurality of mobile client devices on the wireless network and a plurality of servers on the landline network.

19. An intermediary network node as recited in claim 17, wherein the messenger comprises an encoder to encode the message for delivery to the client device in a short message service (SMS) format.

20. An intermediary network node as recited in claim 17, wherein the messenger comprises a notification queue, and wherein the messenger stores the notification in the notification queue when the messenger does not successfully deliver the corresponding message to the client device.

21. An intermediary network node as recited in claim 17, wherein the messenger comprises a notification manager to maintain a queue of notifications received from one or more remote web servers on the landline network, wherein information in each of the notifications is to be delivered to one of a plurality of mobile client devices on the wireless network.

22. An intermediary network node as recited in claim 21, wherein the messenger further comprises a protocol data unit (PDU) constructor to construct the message for delivery to the client device in the form of a PDU.

23. An intermediary network node as recited in claim 21, wherein the messenger further comprises an encoder to encode the message for delivery to the client device in a short message service (SMS) format.

24. An intermediary network node as recited in claim 21, wherein the messenger further comprises a segmentor to segment the message into a plurality of notification messages when a maximum message length is exceeded.

25. An intermediary network node as recited in claim 17, wherein the notification comprises an address identifying the updated information in the web server.

26. An intermediary network node as recited in claim 25, wherein the address represents a hyperlink to the updated information.

27. An intermediary network node as recited in claim 25, wherein the notification further comprises a subscriber identification corresponding to the client device.

28. An intermediary network node as recited in claim 17, wherein the messenger delivers the message to the client device when the subscriber identification in the notification is matched to one of the user accounts in the proxy server.

29. An intermediary network node as recited in claim 28, wherein the messenger assigns a notification identification to the received notification from the web server and wherein the corresponding notification message includes the notification identification.

46. An intermediary network node as recited in claim 17, wherein the narrowband channel and the wideband channel are both implemented at least partially on the wireless network.

30. An apparatus comprising:

means for receiving a notification at a link system coupling a landline data network to a wireless network when information at a remote network server is updated, wherein the remote network server is remote with respect to the link system, and wherein the information is available to a remote client device via a first channel;

means for identifying in the link system the remote client device as being associated with the notification;

means for sending a message corresponding to the notification from the link system to the remote client device via a second channel in response to the notification, to indicate that the information has been updated, the second channel having a bandwidth smaller than a bandwidth of the first channel; and

means for causing a cached copy of the information in the remote client device to be invalidated, so as to cause the updated specific information to be fetched when the cached copy is accessed by a user of the remote client device.

31. An apparatus as recited in claim 30, wherein the remote client device is a mobile device operating on the wireless network, wherein the remote network server operates on the landline data network.

32. An apparatus as recited in claim 31, further comprising means for maintaining a user account associated with the remote client device, wherein said means for identifying comprises means for using a subscriber identifier in the notification to extract a client device identifier from the user account.

33. An apparatus as recited in claim 30, further comprising means for fetching the updated information from the remote network server.

34. An apparatus as recited in claim 33, further comprising means for providing the updated information to the remote client device via the first channel.

35. An apparatus as recited in claim 33, further comprising:

means for receiving a request from the remote client device to establish a communication session via the wideband channel;

means for authenticating the remote client device; and

means for forwarding the updated information to the remote client device via the first channel.

36. An apparatus as recited in claim 30, further comprising means for maintaining a queue of notifications received from one or more remote network servers, wherein information in each of the notifications is to be delivered to one of a plurality of remote client devices.

37. An apparatus as recited in claim 36, further comprising

means for assigning a sequence number to the received notification prior to sending the message to the client device;

and

means for storing the received notification in the queue of notifications according to the sequence number.

38. An apparatus as recited in claim 30, wherein the notification further comprises an action type, the action type for use in causing the remote client device to react to the notification upon the remote client device receiving the message.

39. An apparatus as recited in claim 38, further comprising means for causing an alert message to be generated with respect to the action type to inform a user of the remote client device of the information updated at the remote network server.

40. An apparatus as recited in claim 30, wherein the address comprises a Uniform Resource Locator.

42. An apparatus as recited in claim 30, wherein the means for sending the message corresponding to the notification comprises:

means for assigning a notification identifier to the notification; and

means for transforming the notification along with the assigned notification identifier to the message so that the message is transportable in the narrowband channel.

43. An apparatus as recited in claim 30, wherein the message is a PUSH protocol data unit (PDU).

44. An apparatus as recited in claim 43, wherein said means for transforming comprises means for encoding at least part of the notification message into a format transportable by a message system according to a predefined encoding/decoding scheme.

47. An apparatus as recited in claim 30, wherein the first channel and the second channel are both implemented at least partially on the wireless network.

41. An apparatus comprising:

means for receiving a notification at a link system coupling a landline data network to a wireless network when information at a remote network server is updated, wherein the remote network server is remote with respect to the link system, and wherein the information is available to a remote client device via a first channel;

means for identifying in the link system the remote client device as being associated with the notification; and

means for sending a message corresponding to the notification from the link system to the remote client device via a second channel in response to the notification, to indicate that the information has been updated, the second channel having a bandwidth smaller than a bandwidth of the first channel, wherein the message sent to the remote client device comprises an address identifying the information updated at the remote network server;

means for receiving a request from the remote client device, the request including an indication of the address; and

means for forwarding the updated information to the remote client device via the first channel in response to the request.