Method, system, and software for transmission of information

• US 7,171,443 B2
• Filed: 04/04/2001
• Issued: 01/30/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 04/04/2001
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Prodigy Communications Limited Partnership
• Original Assignee: Prodigy Communications Corporation (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Tiemann, Duane E., Hall, Susan A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Lim; Krisna
• Application Number:
  US09/826,552
• Publication Number:
  US 20020188631A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,127 Days
• Field of Search: 709201-202, 709/203, 709/212, 709217-219, 709/227, 709228-229, 709/232, 709/236, 709/246
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/00 Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9574 of access to content, e.g. by caching
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/166 Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting

Abstract

A method, system and software for efficient transmission of information having dynamic information and static information are disclosed herein. A networked system having a remote site, a user, and a network is used to transmit information between the remote site and the user. The user sends a request for a set of information having dynamic information and static information, such as a hypertext markup language (HTML) file associated with a uniform resource locator (URL), to the remote site. The remote site, responding to the user'"'"'s request, determines one or more dynamic portions and/or one or more static portions of the set of information. In one embodiment, a template representative of the set of information is used to aid in the determination of dynamic and static portions. The remote site transmits the one or more dynamic portions to the user, as well as instructions or references for accessing the one or more static portions from a location or file local to the user. If the contents of the static portions are not locally accessible by the user, the user can send a request for the static portions to the remote site. The user uses the transmitted dynamic portions and the references to the static portions stored locally to reconstruct the original set of information. The present invention finds particular application in HTML servers, whereby the illustrated method may be used to decrease the transmission time and/or the bandwidth used for transmitting one or more HTML files associated with a URL or a web site.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

sending a first request from a user location for an HTML file associated with a URL address indicative of a server location;

receiving the request at the server location;

dividing the HTML file at the server location into a first portion containing static information and a second portion containing dynamic information;

determining a file name of the first portion of the HTML file at the server location;

sending the second portion of the HTML file and the file name to the user location;

determining, based on the file name, if a representation of the first portion of the HTML file is available at the user location;

accessing the representation of the first portion of the HTML file at the user location when the step of determining indicates the representation is available at the user location;

sending a second request from the user location for the representation of the first portion of the HTML file to the server location when the step of determining indicates the representation of the first portion is not available at the user location;

receiving, at the server location, the second request for the representation of the first portion of the HTML file;

sending the representation of the first portion of the HTML file to the user location in response to the second request;

receiving the representation of the first portion at the user location; and

displaying, at the user location, information using the representation of the first portion of the HTML file and the second portion of the HTML file, such that the information displayed is the same as the information that would have been displayed by the HTML file.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the HTML file includes one or more occurrences of a tag, wherein each occurrence of the tag identifies static information.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the second portion of the HTML file includes control information to access the first portion.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the static information and the dynamic information are stored in separate files.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the static information and the dynamic information are stored as different file types.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the file name of the first portion includes a timestamp.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the dynamic information is based on a HTML language and the static information is stored in a format based on a JavaScript language.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the static information includes a JavaScript array, where each element of the array includes a portion of the static information.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the server location includes a plurality of servers.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the first request and the second request are directed to a same server of the plurality of servers when the second request is received at the server location within a predetermined time period of the receipt of the first request at the server location.