Wireless communications environment overlay

• US 7,978,652 B2
• Filed: 01/23/2008
• Issued: 07/12/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 01/23/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Padhye, Jitendra, Chandra, Ranveer, Sivalingam, Lenin Ravindranath
• Primary Examiner(s): Qureshi; Afsar M.
• Application Number:
  US12/018,723
• Publication Number:
  US 20090185514A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,266 Days
• Field of Search: 370241-392, 370449-468, 342/463, 340/539.23, 455/422.1, 709/224
• US Class Current: 370/329
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/189 in combination with wireless systems selective distribution or broadcast in wireless communication networks H04W4/06
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 48/16 Discovering, processing access restriction or access information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/30 Resource management for broadcast services
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 8/186 Processing of subscriber group data
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/12 WLAN [Wireless Local Area Networks]

Abstract

A method is provided, wherein the method comprises identifying nearby wireless communication access points (APs) to which a client computing environment can cooperate with to communicate and receive data through a subscription to a neighborcast group from indentified nearby cooperating access points such that illustratively the neighborcast group comprises a communications overlay between cooperating client computing environments employing the identified nearby wireless communications access points. In an illustrative implementation, a wireless communications environment comprises at least two client computing environments comprising a communications overlay engine operable to process at least one instruction from an exemplary instruction set to perform one or more wireless communications operations over the exemplary communications overlay comprising scanning for cooperating client computing environments and/or wireless access points and/or RSS servers, subscribing to the communications overlay group, and publishing data for consumption by cooperating components of the wireless communications overlay.

Claims

1. A method to communicate data across wireless communications environment, the method comprising:

identifying one or more nearby access points using unique identifiers of the one or more nearby access points; and

subscribing to the one or more nearby cooperating access points to generate a neighborcast group; and

publishing data operable to be received and/or processed by one or more components of the neighborcast group.

2. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising:

communicating data between two or more client computing environments using the generated neighborcast group.

3. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising generating the neighborcast group or publishing data over it using one or more IP multicasting operations.

4. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising generating the neighborcast group by deploying an RSS feed server.

5. The method as recited in claim 4, further comprising subscribing to one or more access point identifiers the RSS feed server for data communications.

6. The method as recited in claim 5, further comprising communicating data among one or more client computing environments through the one or more access points and the RSS feed server.

7. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising receiving data representative of one or more access point performance from one or more client computing environments to determine which of the one or more access points to associate with.

8. The method as recited in claim 7, further comprising publishing data by one or more client computing environments over the neighborcast group about the performance of an access point to which the one or more client computing environments has an association.

9. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising publishing data representative about one or more client computing environments presence within the wireless communications environment.

10. Volatile or non-volatile computer readable storage media having computer readable instructions to instruct a computer to perform a method comprising:

identifying one or more nearby access points using unique identifiers of the one or more nearby access points;

subscribing to the one or more nearby access points to generate a neighborcast group; and

publishing data operable to be received and/or processed by one or more components of the neighborcast group.

11. A system for facilitating communications in a wireless communications environment comprising:

a wireless communication environment overlay engine operable to coordinate the communication of data between two or more nearby client computing environments using a wireless communications environment overlay comprising an overlay operable to communicated, data using Internet Protocol (IP) between two or more nearby client computing environments; and

an instruction set comprising at least one instruction to instruct the wireless communication environment overlay engine to process data representative of operational features of the two or more nearby client computing environments to establish a neighborcast group for the two or more client computing environments, wherein the neighborcast group is operable on a wireless communications network wherein one of the two or more client computing environments maintains wireless communications environment associations different than the other of the two or more client computing environments.

12. The system as recited in claim 11, further comprising two or more access points operable on the wireless communication environment to communicate data with and between client computing environments over the neighborcast group.

13. The system as recited in claim 12, wherein the neighborcast group is established through the deployment of one or more Internet Protocol (IP) multicasting operations.

14. The system as recited in claim 12, wherein the neighborcast group is ,established through the deployment of one or more application level multicasting (ALM) operations.

15. The system as recited in claim 12, wherein the two or more access points are operating on different wireless communications environment communications channels.

16. The system as recited in claim 15, wherein the two more client computing environments are operable to join more than one neighborcast group deployed across the wireless communications channel and operable on the two or more access points.

17. The system as recited in claim 11, further comprising a really simple syndication (RSS) feed computing server environment operable to cooperate with the two or more client computing environments to communicate data over the neighborcast group.

18. The system as recited in claim 11, wherein the two or more client computing environments operate to publish data representative of the operational features of the two or more client computing environments over the neighborcast group.

19. The system as recited in claim 11, wherein the wireless communications environment overlay engine comprises a computing application.

20. The system as recited in claim 19, wherein the computing application is operable on the two or more client computing environments.