Method and an apparatus to request web pages and content rating information thereof

• US 8,015,169 B1
• Filed: 05/24/2004
• Issued: 09/06/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 05/24/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Quest Software, Inc.
• Original Assignee: SonicWALL, Inc. (SonicWall Holdings Ltd.)
• Inventors: Shor, Alexander, Popov, Nikolay V., Dubrovsky, Alex M., Gmuender, John E., Yanovsky, Boris, Zhu, Shunhui, Yanovsky, Roman
• Primary Examiner(s): Mofiz; Apu M
• Assistant Examiner(s): Bibbee; Jared M
• Application Number:
  US10/853,557
• Time in Patent Office: 2,661 Days
• Field of Search: 709/225, 709/229, 707/706, 707/709, 707/736
• US Class Current: 707/706
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/95 Retrieval from the web
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/4511 using domain name system [DNS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0281 Proxies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0428 wherein the data content is protected, e.g. by encrypting or encapsulating the payload
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/60 Scheduling or organising the servicing of application requests, e.g. requests for application data transmissions using the analysis and optimisation of the required network resources admission control or resource allocation H04L47/70

Abstract

A method and an apparatus request web pages and content rating information thereof have been disclosed. In one embodiment, the method includes receiving a request from a user for a web page, retrieving content rating of the web page in response to the request, and fetching the web page substantially simultaneously with the retrieving of the content rating in response to the request. Other embodiments have been claimed and described.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving a request from a user for a web page;

retrieving content rating of the web page in response to the request;

fetching the web page substantially simultaneously with the retrieving of the content rating in response to the request;

receiving the web page;

holding the web page until the content rating of the web page has been retrieved or a predetermined time period for fetching the content rating has expired;

blocking the user from accessing the web page and causing an error message to be presented to the user via a display device if the content rating of the web page is in at least one of a set of one or more predetermined categories;

forwarding the web page, without the content rating, to the user if the content rating has not been retrieved before the predetermined time period for fetching the content rating expires; and

causing the display device to render the web page forwarded to the user.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein retrieving the content rating comprises:

checking whether the content rating is locally stored in a storage device of a content filtering client; and

retrieving the content rating from the storage device if the content rating is locally stored in the storage device.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein retrieving the content rating further comprises sending a request for the content rating to a remote server if the content rating is not locally stored in the storage device.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein retrieving the content rating further comprises setting a content rating flag in the request for the content rating, which comprises a domain name service (DNS) request.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

receiving the content rating from the remote server; and

decrypting the content rating.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the request for the web page comprises an Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request for the web page.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining whether to forward the web page to the user based on the content rating if the content rating is retrieved within the predetermined period of time.

8. A physical machine accessible storage medium that provides instructions that, if executed by a processor, will cause the processor to perform operations comprising:

receiving a request from a user for a web page;

retrieving content rating of the web page in response to the request;

fetching the web page substantially simultaneously with the retrieving of the content rating in response to the request;

receiving the web page;

holding the web page until the content rating of the web page has been retrieved or a predetermined time period for fetching the content rating has expired;

blocking the user from accessing the web page and causing an error message to be presented to the user via a display device if the content rating of the web page is in at least one of a set of one or more predetermined categories;

forwarding the web page, without the content rating, to the user if the content rating has not been retrieved before the predetermined time period for fetching the content rating expires; and

causing the display device to render the web page forwarded to the user.

9. The physical machine accessible storage medium of claim 8, wherein the operations further comprise:

checking whether the content rating is locally stored in a storage device of a content filtering client; and

retrieving the content rating from the storage device if the content rating is locally stored in the storage device.

10. The physical machine accessible storage medium of claim 9, wherein retrieving the content rating further comprises sending a request for the content rating to a remote server if the content rating is not locally stored in the storage device.

11. The physical machine accessible storage medium of claim 10, wherein retrieving the content rating further comprises setting a content rating flag in the request for the content rating, which comprises a domain name service (DNS) request.

12. The physical machine accessible storage medium of claim 11, wherein the operations further comprise:

receiving the content rating from the remote server; and

decrypting the content rating.

13. The physical machine accessible storage medium of claim 8, wherein the request for the web page comprises an Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request for the web page.

14. The physical machine accessible storage medium of claim 8, wherein the operations further comprise:

determining whether to forward the web page to the user based on the content rating if the content rating is retrieved within the predetermined period of time.

15. A system comprising:

a server; and

a content filtering client to be logically coupled between the server and a first set of one or more client applications, to get content rating of web pages requested by the client applications, to request the web pages substantially simultaneously with getting the content rating, to hold the web pages until the content rating has been retrieved or a predetermined time period for fetching the content rating has expired, to forward the web page, without the content rating, to the client applications if the content rating has not been retrieved before the predetermined time period for fetching the content rating expires, to cause a display device to present the web pages forwarded to users if the web pages are not in any of a set of one or more predetermined categories or if the content rating has not been retrieved before the predetermined time period for fetching the content rating expires, and to cause the display device to present an error message and to block the client applications from accessing the web pages if the content rating of the web pages is in at least one of the set of one or more predetermined categories.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the content filtering client includes a first storage device, the content filtering client is operable to check whether the content rating is available in the first storage device and to retrieve the content rating from the first storage device if the content rating is available in the first storage device.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the content filtering client is operable to send a request for content rating to the server if the content rating is not available in the first storage device.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the server is coupled to a database and the server is operable to retrieve the content rating from the database to send to the content filtering client.

19. The system of claim 17, wherein the server comprises a second storage device and the server is operable to retrieve the content rating from the second storage device to send to the content filtering client.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the server comprises a domain name service (DNS) server.

21. The system of claim 15, wherein the content filtering client comprises a processor to determine whether the client applications are allowed to access the web pages based on the content rating retrieved.

22. The system of claim 15, further comprising one or more client machines to run the client applications and the content filtering client.

23. The system of claim 15, further comprising:

a firewall to run the content filtering client; and

one or more client machines to run the client applications, the firewall being coupled between the server and the one or more client machines.

24. A method comprising:

receiving a request for a web page from a client application;

overlapping the process of fetching the web page from a web page host with the process of retrieving from a server content rating information for that web page;

receiving the web page from the web page host;

holding the web page until the content rating information has been retrieved or a predetermined time period for fetching the content rating has expired;

determining whether to block access to the fetched web page based on the content rating information;

forwarding the web page, without the content rating, to the client application if the content rating has not been retrieved before the predetermined time period for fetching the content rating expires;

presenting the fetched web page via a display device in a client machine if the access to the fetched web page is not blocked or if the content rating information has not been retrieved before the predetermined time period for fetching the content rating expires; and

presenting an error message via the display device if the access to the fetched web page is blocked.

25. A method comprising:

receiving a request from a web page from a client application;

forwarding the request for the web page to a web page host prior to determining whether access will be blocked based on content rating information;

requesting the content rating information for the web page from a server substantially simultaneously with the forwarding of the request for the web page;

receiving the web page from the web page host;

holding the web page until the content rating information has been received or a predetermined time period for fetching the content rating has expired;

receiving the content rating information from the server;

determining whether to block access to the web page based on the received content rating information;

forwarding the web page, without the content rating, to the user if the content rating has not been retrieved before the predetermined time period for fetching the content rating expires;

presenting the web page via a display device in a client machine if the access to the web page is not blocked or if the content rating information has not been retrieved before the predetermined time period for fetching the content rating expires; and

presenting an error message via the display device if the access to the fetched web page is blocked.

26. The method of claim 25, further comprising receiving the web page prior to said determining.

27. An apparatus comprising:

a content filtering client, to be coupled between a client application and a server and web page hosts, to forward requests from the client application for web pages to at least one of the web page hosts prior to having content rating information for those web pages, to overlap retrieval from the server of the content rating information for those web pages with the fetch of those web pages, to hold the web pages until the content rating information of the web pages is retrieved or a predetermined time period for fetching the content rating has expired, to selectively block return of the web pages to the client application based on the retrieved content rating information, to forward the web pages, without the content rating, to the client application if the content rating has not been retrieved before the predetermined time period for fetching the content rating expires, to cause a display device in a client machine to present an error message if the access to the web pages is blocked, and to cause the display device to present the web pages forwarded if the access to the web pages is not blocked or if the content rating information has not been retrieved before the predetermined time period for fetching the content rating expires.

28. The apparatus of claim 27, further comprising a firewall, said firewall comprising said content filtering client.

29. The apparatus of claim 27, wherein the content filtering client includes a first storage device, the content filtering client is operable to check whether the content rating is available in the first storage device and to retrieve the content rating from the first storage device if the content rating is available in the first storage device.