State migration of edge-of-network applications

• US 9,258,666 B2
• Filed: 10/17/2012
• Issued: 02/09/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 10/17/2012
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Agrawal, Dakshi, Bisdikian, Chatschik, Verma, Dinesh C., Zerfos, Petros
• Primary Examiner(s): Chriss, Andrew
• Assistant Examiner(s): Ahmed, Atique
• Application Number:
  US13/654,137
• Publication Number:
  US 20140105174A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,210 Days
• Field of Search: 370/331, 370/392, 370/252, 370/412, 455/401, 455/436, 709/202
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/30 by measured or perceived connection quality data
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/304 due to measured or perceived resources with higher communication quality
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/00 Services specially adapted for wireless communication networks; Facilities therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/543 based on requested quality, e.g. QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/10 Connection setup
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 8/08 Mobility data transfer

Abstract

A system and method that externalizes mobile device state migration (i.e., checkpointing) without being dependent upon any particular Edge Application (EdgeApp) proxy server or cellular network base station. In this manner, the Edge Application (EdgeApp) proxy server does not have to be aware of a migration process, yet will enable state information to be provided to other EdgeApp proxy/server nodes at the edge of the network (cell tower).

Claims

1. A method for providing enhanced quality of experience (QoE) to mobile device users comprising:

inspecting, at a monitoring device associated with a communications link, packet headers and payloads from packets transmitted over said communications link between the mobile device and a current communications network edge node providing a point of attachment to said network;

extracting, from said inspected packet payloads, application-specific state data of one or more user applications currently running in the mobile device, said application-specific state data including identities of specific one or more application-aware edge-node server proxy devices servicing said user applications on mobile device, and logging said application-specific state data in a storage device external to the current communications network edge node or application-aware edge-node server proxy device, said logged application-specific state data comprising;

web links to cached objects that had been requested by a user application;

selecting, for each identified edge-node server proxy device, a method of reconstructing a state of a user application, said selecting comprising communicating a list of said web links to a destination EdgeApp server that will service the mobile device at a destination network edge-node;

detecting a migration of said mobile device from said current point of attachment network to another attachment point at the destination network edge-node;

populating, responsive to said detecting, said application-specific state data from storage at the current network edge node to a storage device associated with said destination network edge-node and pre-fetching said cached objects from said list of web links for storage at the destination network edge-node prior to said migration; and

reconstructing, based on said selected method, said application state of said currently running one or more mobile device user applications at the destination application-aware edge-node proxy server device at said destination network edge-node to enable seamless continued service to the mobile device user prior to the destination network edge-node becoming a new point of attachment for said mobile device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said reconstructing application state of a currently running mobile device user application at the destination network edge-node occurs prior to a roaming mobile user device session handoff from the current point of attachment to the destination network edge-node.

3. The method as claimed in claim 1, further including:

generating a trigger to initiate said populating and reconstructing upon said detecting.

4. The method as claimed in claim 3, wherein said detecting migration is based on predictive estimation of the mobile device location given a presence in current cell in cellular network and attachment to a current network edge-node.

5. The method as claimed in claim 3, wherein said detecting migration is based on micro-diversity signal processing techniques of signals communicated by said mobile device.

6. The method as claimed in claim 2, further including:

utilizing an application program specific API to obtain state of a mobile device application from an application-aware edge-node server at a source node, said API further initiating reconstructing said application state at the destination application-aware edge-node server prior to migrating said mobile device to said destination network node.

7. The method as claimed in claim 6, wherein state obtained utilizing an application program specific API include application links to objects cached to a web caching server, said method further comprising:

requesting said destination application-aware edge-node server to pre-fetch objects corresponding to said application links cached at a web caching server at a source application-aware edge-node server prior to migrating said mobile device to said destination network node.

8. The method as claimed in claim 1, further comprising:

obtaining, from the transmitted packets, call characteristics state data associated with the current mobile device call.

9. The method as claimed in claim 8, further comprising:

obtaining from the call characteristics state data an identifier of each one or more particular application-aware edge-node server devices servicing said mobile device user;

selecting, for each identifier, a method of populating application state stored in current edge node to the destination application-aware edge-node server associated with that identifier.

10. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the method of populating application state stored in current edge node to the destination edge node associated with the identifier comprises:

encoding bytes of web application content for caching at the destination network edge-node; and

decoding cached bytes associated with data or content at the destination edge node.

11. The method according to claim 1, wherein the inspecting comprises:

classifying one or more applications currently running in the mobile device by using;

scanning strings and bits and byte pattern in the payloads in the packets transmitted between the mobile device and a current communication network edge node.

12. The method according to claim 11, wherein the classifying further comprises:

scanning for one or more patterns in a communication behavior of the one or more applications.

13. The method according to claim 12, wherein the classifying further comprises:

calculating a statistical indicator which identify transmission types of the packets, the calculated statistical indicator including one of;

a mean, a median, a variation, of values collected from the scanning for the one or more patterns.

14. The method according to claim 1, wherein said logged application-specific state data comprises video objects, wherein a selected method of reconstructing comprises:

extracting said video objects from said communications; and

transcoding said video objects for availability at the destination network edge-node.

15. The method according to claim 1, wherein said logged application-specific state data comprises media files or web pages that had been requested by a user.

16. The method according to claim 11, further comprising:

employing, at the current edge node, a proxylet process to communicate with a different servicing proxy device, a servicing proxy device comprising one of;

a byte caching decode proxy server, a web caching proxy server, and video transcoding proxy server,

wherein said proxylet process calls a specific interface for said reconstructing the user application state for a mobile device at the destination network edge-node.

17. The method according to claim 16, wherein an employed proxylet process is configured to know an application-specific state relevant to each edge-node server proxy devices, said extracting using an employed proxylet process to replace or complement a performed state extraction operation.

18. The method according to claim 16, wherein an employed proxylet process performs:

collecting and logging current edge node application server state through different servicing proxy device interfaces; and

calling specific servicing proxy device interfaces to reconstruct the user application state for a mobile device at the destination network edge-node.