Remotely retrieving information from consumer devices

• US 9,292,358 B2
• Filed: 06/13/2011
• Issued: 03/22/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 06/13/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Kazan, Wissam, Przysucha, Marcin, Kopczynska, Aleksandra, Ponnuru, Hemantha, Ganapathy, Gnana Kasturi, Evans, Elizabeth
• Primary Examiner(s): Joo, Joshua
• Application Number:
  US13/158,457
• Publication Number:
  US 20120317237A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,744 Days
• Field of Search: 709204-206
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/549 Remote execution
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/54 Interprogram communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/025 for remote control or remote monitoring of applications

Abstract

Users that access their personal information from a home computer typically only need access to data, and do not need to remotely control the desktops of their home computers. By providing a remote access server that coordinates access to the file system of a user device, such as a home computer, a remote device, such as a mobile phone, can send commands to the user device. The remote device sends requests including commands to the server. The user device periodically requests these commands from the server. An application on the user device processes these commands, and in response provides the requested information to the server. The server responds to the requests from the remote device with the requested information from the user device.

Claims

1. A computing device configured to allow a remote device to request commands for file system operations to be performed on a file system of the computing device through a remote access service, the computing device comprising:

memory storing computer-executable instructions,

a processing unit coupled to the memory, the computer-executable instructions executed by the processing unit to;

establish a network connection to receive requests for connections from the remote access service, and in response to a request from the remote access service for a connection, authenticate the remote device for access to the file system of the computing device and, after authentication of the remote device, establish a pinned connection with a server in the remote access service by issuing a sequence of requests to the server;

wherein a pinned connection has been established between the remote device and the server by the remote device sending a long standing request to the server including one or more commands for file system operations on the computing device;

receive the one or more commands for file system operations from the remote device, after authentication of the remote device, through responses from the server to the sequence of requests; and

establish an input for receiving the one or more commands, and cause the one or more commands to be performed to retrieve data from the file system of the computing device, and establish an output for providing the data from the file system resulting from the one or more commands;

receive the data resulting from the one or more commands and send the data from the file system to the remote device by sending a message containing the data to the server with which the remote device has established the pinned connection, the server in turn responding to the requests from the remote device with the data from the file system of the computing device to the remote device.

2. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the one or more commands include parameters identifying the remote device, and wherein the data resulting from the one or more commands includes one or more files, and wherein the computing device processes the one or more files into a file format suitable for the remote device according to the parameters included with the one or more commands.

3. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the one or more commands include instructions to enumerate a directory in a file system of the computing device.

4. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the one or more commands include instructions to retrieve a file in a file system of the computing device.

5. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the one or more commands include instructions to retrieve a collection of files in a file system of the computing device, and the computer-executable instructions executed by the processing unit collects and aggregates the files into a package to be sent to the remote device.

6. The computing device of claim 1, including a queue for requests for each session between the remote device and the computing device.

7. The computing device of claim 1, including a request state map for each request for managing information about communication between the remote device and the computing device related to the each request.

8. A remote access service for allowing a remote device to request commands for file system operations to be performed on a file system of a computing device, the remote access service comprising:

a load balancer connected to a computer network and configured to receive, from the remote device, requests to access the computing device;

a plurality of servers;

the load balancer selecting one of the plurality of servers for communication with the remote device and the computing device in response to a request to access the computing device from the remote device;

the selected server comprising memory storing computer-executable instructions and a processing unit coupled to the memory, the computer-executable instructions executed by the processing unit to;

establish a pinned connection between the remote device and the selected server by the remote device sending a long standing request to the selected server including one or more commands for file system operations on the computing device;

cause the computing device to be notified of the request to access the computing device from the remote device;

cause the computing device to perform authentication of the remote device for access to the file system of the computing device;

after authentication of the remote device by the computing device, establish a pinned connection between the selected server and the computing device; and

while the connections between the selected server and the computing device and between the remote device and the selected server are pinned;

receive requests for the one or more commands for file system operations to be performed on the computing device from the remote device;

receive requests from the computing device for the one or more commands from the remote device;

respond to the requests from the computing device with the one or more commands from the remote device;

receive results from the one or more commands from the computing device including data from the file system of the computing device; and

forward the received data from the file system of the computing device to the remote device in a response to the requests from the remote device.

9. The remote access service of claim 8, wherein the load balancer selects the server according to geographic proximity of the server with the remote device and the computing device.

10. The remote access service of claim 8, further comprising a notification service, wherein the selected server instructs the notification service to inform the computing device about the request to access the computing device from the remote device.

11. The remote access service of claim 8, wherein the one or more commands include parameters identifying the remote device, and wherein data resulting from the one or more commands includes one or more files, and wherein the computing device processes the one or more files into a file format suitable for the remote device according to the parameters included with the one or more commands.

12. The remote access service of claim 8, wherein the one or more commands include instructions to enumerate a directory in a file system of the computing device.

13. The remote access service of claim 8, wherein the one or more commands include instructions to retrieve a file in a file system of the computing device.

14. The remote access service of claim 8, wherein the one or more commands include instructions to retrieve a collection of files in a file system of the computing device, and in response to the one or more commands, the remote access service receives a package of aggregated files from the computing device and sends the package of aggregated files to the remote device.

15. A system providing access to information in a file system of a computing device by a remote device, the system comprising:

the computing device including storage, wherein the information in the file system is stored in data files on the storage;

a remote access service to which the computing device is connected over a computer network, the remote access service comprising a plurality of servers,

wherein a selected server of the plurality of servers is configured to;

establish a pinned connection between the remote device and the selected server in response to the remote device sending a long standing request to access to the computing device using the selected server, the long standing request including one or more commands for file system operations on the computing device;

cause the computing device to be notified of a request for access by the remote device;

cause the computing device to perform authentication of the remote device for access to the file system of the computing device;

after authentication of the remote device by the computing device, establish a pinned connection between the selected server and the computing device; and

while the connections between the selected server and the computing device and between the remote device and the selected server are pinned;

receive requests for the one or more commands for file system operations to be performed on the computing device from the remote device;

receive requests from the computing device for the one or more commands from the remote device;

respond to the requests from the computing device with the one or more commands from the remote device;

receive results from the one or more commands from the computing device including data from the file system of the computing device; and

forward the received data from the file system of the computing device to the remote device in a response to the requests from the remote device.

16. The system of claim 15 wherein the computing device comprises:

memory storing computer-executable instructions,

a processing unit coupled to the memory, the computer-executable instructions executed by the processing unit to;

establish a network connection to receive requests for access by the remote device from servers of the remote access service, and in response to a request for access from the selected server from among the plurality of servers of the remote access service, connect to the selected server by issuing a sequence of requests to the selected server;

receive the one or more commands from the remote device through responses from the selected server to the sequence of requests; and

establish an input for receiving the one or more commands, and cause the one or more commands to be performed on the computing device, and establish an output for providing data resulting from the one or more commands;

receive the data resulting from the one or more commands and send the data to the remote device by sending a message containing the data to the selected server.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the one or more commands include parameters identifying the remote device and wherein the computer-executable instructions executed by the processing unit processes the data resulting from the one or more commands into a format suitable for the remote device.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the one or more commands include instructions to enumerate a directory in a file system of the computing device.

19. The system of claim 16, wherein the one or more commands include instructions to retrieve a file in a file system of the computing device.

20. The system of claim 16, wherein the one or more commands include instructions to retrieve a collection of files in a file system of the computing device, and the computer-executable instructions executed by the processing unit collects and aggregates the files into a package to be sent to the remote device.

21. The system of claim 15, wherein the plurality of servers includes a notification server configured by a notification service application to notify the computing device about the request for access from the remote device, and wherein the computing device is configured to subscribe to the notification service application to accept notifications from the notification server.

22. The system of claim 15, wherein the selected server is further configured to:

queue the received requests for the one or more commands in a queue at the selected server;

in responding to the requests from the computing device, accessing the one or more commands from the remote device from the queue.

23. The system of claim 16, wherein the computing device includes a queue for requests for each session between the remote device and the computing device.

24. The system of claim 23, wherein the computer-executable instructions executed by the processing unit configures the computing device to, in response to receiving a command, add each of the requests to the queue and add an entry for each of the request to a request state map.