Printer-server connections

• US 9,092,180 B2
• Filed: 01/24/2013
• Issued: 07/28/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 01/24/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Pizot, Laurent, Kulkarni, Sudhindra Venkatesh, Hofer, Rodney, Gargi, Nikhilesh
• Primary Examiner(s): LETT, THOMAS J
• Application Number:
  US13/749,341
• Publication Number:
  US 20140204412A1
• Time in Patent Office: 915 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/122 with regard to computing resources, e.g. memory, CPU
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1221 with regard to power consumption
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1236 Connection management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1287 via internet
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1296 Printer job scheduling or printer resource handling
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

A plurality of printing devices are connected to a cloud server via a persistent connection. The cloud server identifies at least one inactive printing device and provides the at least one inactive printing device with non-persistent connection information via the persistent connection. A polling message is received from the at least one inactive printing device via the non-persistent connection. The cloud server indicates when the at least one inactive printing device is to return to an active state.

Claims

1. A cloud server computing device comprising:

a processor to;

identify at least one inactive printing device having a persistent connection with the cloud server computing device;

provide the at least one inactive printing device with non-persistent connection information via the persistent connection;

receive a polling message from the at least one inactive printing device via the non-persistent connection; and

send an instruction to the at least one inactive printing device to return to an active state when a job request is available for the at least one inactive printing device.

2. The cloud server computing device of claim 1, the processor further to send the job request to the at least one inactive printing device via the persistent connection.

3. The cloud server computing device of claim 1, wherein the instruction comprises a bitmap to indicate when the at least one inactive printing device is to be active and switch to the persistent connection.

4. The cloud server computing device of claim 3, wherein the bitmap comprises at least one bit that identifies the at least one inactive printing device of a plurality of printing devices, and wherein the at least one bit is set to indicate when the at least one inactive printing device is to be active and switch to the persistent connection.

5. The cloud server computing device of claim 4, wherein the bitmap is compressed using a run-length encoding (RLE) technique, the processor further to send the compressed bitmap to a content delivery network (CDN) for delivery to the at least one inactive printing device.

6. The cloud server computing device of claim 1, wherein the persistent connection comprises an extensible messaging and presence protocol (XMPP) connection.

7. The cloud server computing device of claim 6, wherein the XMPP connection comprises a secure XMPP connection.

8. The cloud server computing device of claim 1, wherein the non-persistent connection information comprises a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) uniform resource locator (URL).

9. The cloud server computing device of claim 1, wherein the non-persistent connection information specifies a polling frequency at which the at least one inactive printing device is to send the polling message to the cloud server computing device.

10. The cloud server computing device of claim 1, wherein the polling message comprises an HTTP GET request.

11. The cloud server computing device of claim 1, the processor further to identify the at least one inactive printing device when a ping packet is not received from the at least one inactive printing device within a threshold time.

12. The cloud server computing device of claim 1, the processor further to:

identify at least one printing device of a plurality of printing devices as active based on receipt of a ping packet from the at least one active printing device within a threshold time; and

maintain the persistent connection with the at least one active printing device.

13. The cloud server computing device of claim 1, the processor further to:

register a plurality of printing devices with the cloud server computing device, wherein the plurality of printing devices includes the at least one inactive printing device;

provide each of the plurality of printing devices with a device identification usable by the plurality of printing devices for connecting with the cloud server computing device.

14. A method of establishing a connection between a cloud server and a plurality of printing devices, comprising:

identifying at least one inactive printing device having a persistent connection with the cloud server;

providing the at least one inactive printing device with non-persistent connection information via the persistent connection;

receiving a polling message from the at least one inactive printing device via the non-persistent connection; and

responsive to receiving the polling message, sending a bitmap to the at least one inactive printing device, wherein the bitmap includes at least one bit to indicate when the at least one inactive printing device is to become active and switch to the persistent connection, and wherein the bitmap is sent via the non-persistent connection.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising switching to the persistent connection when the bitmap is received by the at least one inactive printing device.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising sending a job request to the at least one inactive printing device via the persistent connection, wherein the job request comprises at least one of a print job, a scan job, a facsimile job, and a copy job.

17. The method of claim 14, further comprising sending the bitmap to a content delivery network (CDN), wherein the CDN is to deliver to the bitmap to the at least one inactive printing device.

18. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

establishing a persistent connection with a plurality of printing devices including the at least one inactive printing device;

registering the plurality of printing device with the cloud server, wherein registering the plurality of printing devices includes at least associating a device identification with the plurality of printing devices.

19. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions that, when executed by a processor in a cloud server, cause the cloud server to:

identify at least one inactive printing device having a persistent connection with the cloud server;

provide the at least one inactive printing device with non-persistent connection information via the persistent connection;

receive a polling message from the at least one inactive printing device via the non-persistent connection; and

send an instruction to the at least one inactive printing device to return to an active state when a job request is available for the at least one inactive printing device.

20. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 19, wherein the persistent connection comprises a secure extensible messaging and presence protocol (XMPP) connection and wherein the non-persistent connection information comprises a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) uniform resource locator (URL).