Automated service discovery and dynamic connection management

• US 8,924,509 B2
• Filed: 07/03/2012
• Issued: 12/30/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 08/30/2007
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Lattice Semiconductor Corporation
• Original Assignee: Silicon Image, Inc. (Lattice Semiconductor Corporation)
• Inventors: Schmidt, Brian K., Hanko, James G., Northcutt, J. Duane
• Primary Examiner(s): Lazaro, David
• Assistant Examiner(s): DRABIK, SARAH E
• Application Number:
  US13/541,390
• Publication Number:
  US 20120296955A1
• Time in Patent Office: 910 Days
• Field of Search: 709201-203, 709/217
• US Class Current: 709/217
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2809 indicating that an appliance service is present in a home automation network monitoring functionality H04L43/0817; discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services, H04L67/51
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/51 Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/54 Presence management, e.g. monitoring or registration for receipt of user log-on information, or the connection status of the users

Abstract

In some embodiments, an apparatus includes device functional circuitry to perform at least one service; and network interface control circuitry to control interaction between the apparatus and a network. The network interface control circuitry includes a service discovery module to (1) send a presence announcement message to be transmitted outside the device to let other devices outside the device know of services the device may perform and (2) to receive presence announcement messages from the other devices outside the device to learn what services to the other devices may perform. In some embodiments, the network interface control circuitry includes a dynamic connection management module. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Claims

1. A device comprising:

device functional circuitry to perform one or more services;

network interface control circuitry to control interaction between the device and a network, wherein the network interface control circuitry includes;

a service discovery module to;

send presence announcement messages to be transmitted outside the device to periodically inform other devices outside the device regarding services the device may perform; and

receive presence announcement messages from the other devices outside the device to learn what services the other devices may perform,

a dynamic connection management module to perform dynamic connection management including managing connections of the device with other devices outside the device; and

a contract table maintained by the device to indicate remote services that are currently available from the other devices, the availability of remote services from the other devices being determined by the device based solely on received presence announcement messages, wherein the device is to determine that a first remote service of another device has left the network if a second presence announcement message for the first remote service has not arrived within a certain time period after arrival of a first presence announcement message for the first remote service, the time period being based on a first expiration time value for the first presence announcement contained in the first presence announcement message and on factors regarding transmitted and received presence announcement messages;

wherein the service discovery module is to set the factors regarding transmitted and received presence announcement messages, the factors including;

an announcement expiration time value for sent presence announcement messages for services of the device to control frequency of presence announcement messages the service discovery module sends; and

a sensitivity to expiration of received presence announcement messages, the sensitivity being a predetermined additional length of time after expiration of a received presence announcement message, wherein a remote service described in the received presence announcement message is determined to be unavailable upon the passage of the additional length of time after expiration of the received presence announcement message;

wherein each presence announcement message includes an identifier of a service included in the presence announcement message, a descriptor to identify a type or class of the service included in the presence announcement message, and an expiration time value to indicate how long the presence announcement message is valid;

wherein each service of the device may register interest in one or more classes of remote services with the dynamic connection management module, the dynamic connection management module maintaining a cache of discovered service locations that match the registered interests of the services of the device in the one or more classes of remote services, and wherein a respective service of the device is configured to send a message to a remote service by providing a request to the dynamic connection management module, the request including message data, a message length, a service identifier, and a cryptography flag.

2. The device of claim 1, further comprising one or more agents, each given agent of the one or more agents being configured to manage a corresponding hardware resource and to provide a corresponding service.

3. The device of claim 2, wherein each given agent of the device has a unique identifier that associates the given agent with an equivalence class, the equivalence class defining a relationship between the given agent and one or more remote agents that provide the remote services.

4. The device of claim 1, wherein the device is configured to send a presence request message to request a notice from the other devices regarding available services provided by the other devices.

5. The device of claim 1, wherein the network interface control circuitry further includes:

a network security module to disallow unauthorized signals past the network interface control circuitry, the network security module being coupled between the service discovery module and a transmitter or receiver and between the dynamic connection management module and the transmitter or receiver.

6. The device of claim 1, wherein:

the respective service is configured to simultaneously communicate with a plurality of remote services via a single connection record.

7. The device of claim 1, wherein the services of the device can query the dynamic connection management module to iterate over the cache of discovered services.

8. The device of claim 1, wherein:

upon receiving the request from the respective service of the device to send a message to the remote service, the dynamic connection management module searches for the service identifier included in the request in the cache of discovered service locations to determine if the dynamic connection management module has an open connection to the remote service; and

if no open connection exists, the dynamic connection management module opens a connection to the remote service.

9. The device of claim 1, wherein the dynamic connection management module provides a reliability requirement by wrapping service messages to provide reliability.

10. The device of claim 1, wherein managing connections of the device with other devices outside the device includes, if there is no connection record available, reclaiming a least recently used connection record by closing a respective connection.

11. A system comprising:

a network infrastructure;

a plurality of devices;

wherein each device of the plurality of devices includes;

device functional circuitry to perform one or more services;

network interface control circuitry to control interaction between the device and a network, wherein the network interface control circuitry of the device includes;

a service discovery module to;

send presence announcement messages to be transmitted outside the device to periodically inform other devices outside the device regarding services the device may perform; and

receive presence announcement messages from the other devices outside the device to learn what services the other devices may perform,

a dynamic connection management module to perform dynamic connection management for the device including managing connections of the device with other devices outside the device, and

a contract table maintained by the device to indicate remote services that are currently available from the other devices, the availability of remote services from the other devices being determined by the device based solely on received presence announcement messages, wherein the device is to determine that a first remote service of another device has left the network if a second presence announcement message for the first remote service has not arrived within a certain time period after arrival of a first presence announcement message for the first remote service, the time period being based on a first expiration time value for the presence announcement message contained in the first presence announcement message and factors regarding transmitted and received presence announcement messages;

wherein the service discovery module for each device is to set the factors regarding transmitted and received presence announcement messages, the factors including;

an announcement expiration time value for sent presence announcement messages for services of the device to control the frequency of presence announcement messages the service discovery module sends; and

a sensitivity to expiration of received presence announcement messages, the sensitivity being a predetermined additional length of time after expiration of a received presence announcement message, wherein a remote service described in the received presence announcement message is determined to be unavailable upon the passage of the additional length of time after expiration of the received presence announcement message;

wherein each presence announcement message includes an identifier of a service included in the presence announcement message, a descriptor to identify a type or class of the service included in the presence announcement message, and an expiration time value to indicate how long the presence announcement message is valid;

wherein each service of a given device of the plurality of devices may register interest in one or more classes of remote services with the dynamic connection management module, the dynamic connection management module maintaining a cache of discovered service locations that match the registered interests of the services of the given device in the one or more classes of remote services, and wherein a respective service of the given device is configured to send a message to a remote service by providing a request to the dynamic connection management module, the request including message data, a message length, a service identifier, and a cryptography flag.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the respective service of the given device is configured to simultaneously communicate with a plurality of remote services via a single connection record.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein multiple services are hosted on a single device of the plurality of devices.

14. The system of claim 11, wherein the network is a local area network and broadcast communication is used for the network.

15. The system of claim 11, wherein the network includes routing of messages and Internet multicast.

16. The system of claim 12, wherein encryption is used in the system, and wherein a cryptographic state is stored outside of a connection record maintained by the dynamic connection management module of the device.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein:

responsive to receiving the request from the respective service, the dynamic connection management module opens a new connection to enable the respective service to send the message to the remote service.

18. The system of claim 11, wherein managing connections of the device with other devices outside the device includes, if there is no connection record available, reclaiming a least recently used connection record by closing a respective connection.