Distributing publication messages to devices

• US 10,833,881 B1
• Filed: 11/06/2017
• Issued: 11/10/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 11/06/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Jindal, Himanshu, Wicker, Gary
• Primary Examiner(s): Lazaro, David R
• Assistant Examiner(s): Chang, Julian
• Application Number:
  US15/804,799
• Time in Patent Office: 1,100 Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/18 for broadcast or conference , e.g. multicast
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/185 with management of multicast group membership
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/66 Arrangements for connecting between networks having differing types of switching systems, e.g. gateways
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0876 based on the identity of the terminal or configuration, e.g. MAC address, hardware or software configuration or device fingerprint
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/10 for controlling access to devices or network resources
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/102 Entity profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/567 Integrating service provisioning from a plurality of service providers

Abstract

A technology is described for distributing a publication message. An example method may include receiving a message at a first device gateway to broadcast to devices subscribed to a broadcast topic. The first device gateway maintains a first subscription table indicating which devices connected to the first device gateway are subscribed to the broadcast topic. The first device gateway distributes the message to the devices indicated in the first subscription table as being subscribed to the broadcast topic. In addition, the first device gateway may distribute the message to a second device gateway which maintains a second subscription table indicating which devices connected to the second device gateway are subscribed to the broadcast topic, and the second device gateway distributes the message to the devices indicated in the second subscription table as being subscribed to the broadcast topic.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

at least one processor;

a memory device including instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the system to;

receive, at a first device gateway, a publication message from a device, wherein the first device gateway is one of a plurality of device gateways that (1) act as gateways to a service provider environment and (2) broadcast publication messages to devices subscribed to a broadcast topic using subscription tables maintained by the plurality of device gateways and (3) forward messages published to non-broadcast topics to a centralized publication-subscription service located in the service provider environment;

determine, at the first device gateway, that the publication message is for broadcast to other devices subscribed to the broadcast topic;

obtain from a first subscription table a device listing of the devices which are in network connection with the first device gateway and are subscribed to the broadcast topic;

send the publication message to the devices indicated in the device listing; and

send the publication message to a second device gateway, which is included in the plurality of device gateways, that maintains a second subscription table indicating which of the devices in network connection with the second device gateway are subscribed to receive the publication message via the broadcast topic.

2. The system as in claim 1, further comprising a memory device including instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the system to:

receive a device request to establish a network connection with the first device gateway that includes instructions to subscribe the device to the broadcast topic; and

subscribe the device to the broadcast topic by linking a device identifier to a device registration and the broadcast topic in the first subscription table.

3. The system as in claim 1, wherein the first subscription table is stored in a computer memory of the first device gateway, and the first subscription table links a device registration to the broadcast topic.

4. The system as in claim 1, wherein a MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport) protocol is used to send and receive the publication message.

5. A computer implemented method, comprising:

receiving, at a first device gateway, a publication message, wherein the first device gateway is one of a plurality of device gateways which act as gateways to a service provider environment and broadcast publication messages to devices subscribed to a broadcast topic using subscription tables and forward messages published to non-broadcast topics to a centralized publication-subscription service located in the service provider environment;

determining, at the first device gateway, that the publication message is for broadcast to the devices subscribed to the broadcast topic;

obtaining subscription information from a first subscription table indicating the devices subscribed to the broadcast topic;

sending the publication message to the devices which are subscribed to the broadcast topic and are in network connection with the first device gateway; and

sending the publication message to a second device gateway to be broadcast to the devices connected to the second device gateway, which are subscribed to the broadcast topic.

6. The method in claim 5, wherein the first subscription table is located on the first device gateway and a second subscription table is located on the second device gateway.

7. The method in claim 5, further comprising analyzing the publication message to determine that the publication message is published to the broadcast topic, which causes the publication message to be sent to the second device gateway.

8. The method in claim 5, wherein the publication message is sent to the second device gateway in parallel to sending the publication message to the devices in network connection with the first device gateway.

9. The method in claim 5, wherein sending the publication message to the second device gateway further comprises sending the publication message to a publication message queue service that sends the publication message to device gateways included in a service provider environment.

10. The method in claim 5, wherein sending the publication message to the second device gateway further comprises launching compute service program code that sends the publication message to device gateways included in a service provider environment.

11. The method in claim 5, wherein sending the publication message to the devices in network connection with the first device gateway further comprises assigning a portion of threads in a thread pool for a device gateway to send the publication message to the devices that are in network connection with the first device gateway and are subscribed to the broadcast topic.

12. The method in claim 5, wherein sending the publication message to the devices in network connection with the first device gateway further comprises determining an amount of network bandwidth to use to send the publication message to the devices that are in network connection with the first device gateway and are subscribed to the broadcast topic.

13. The method in claim 5, wherein sending the publication message to the devices in network connection with the first device gateway further comprises obtaining rules from an account policy used to distribute the publication message to the devices that are in network connection with the device gateway and are subscribed to the broadcast topic.

14. The method in claim 5, further comprising:

receiving device requests to establish network connections with the first device gateway to access managed services and applications hosted in the service provider environment, wherein the device requests include subscriptions to message topics;

identifying a portion of the subscriptions as broadcast subscriptions to the broadcast topic; and

building the first subscription table in computer memory of the first device gateway to include subscription information for the devices subscribed to the broadcast topic.

15. The method in claim 14, further comprising:

determining that the first subscription table exceeds a memory limitation of the computer memory; and

storing a portion of the first subscription table on a local data store for the first device gateway.

16. The method in claim 5, wherein the publication message to broadcast to the devices subscribed to the broadcast topic is received from a device in network connection with the first device gateway, from a service, or from an application hosted in the service provider environment.

17. A non-transitory machine readable storage medium having instructions embodied thereon, the instructions when executed by a processor:

receive, at a first device gateway, a publication message, wherein the first device gateway is one of a plurality of device gateways that act as gateways to a service provider environment, and broadcast publication messages to devices subscribed to a broadcast topic using subscription tables maintained by the plurality of device gateways, and forward messages published to non-broadcast topics to a centralized publication-subscription service located in the service provider environment;

determine, at the first device gateway, that the publication message is to be broadcast to the devices subscribed to the broadcast topic;

identify a subscription table in computer memory for the first device gateway that indicates which of the devices in network connection with the first device gateway are subscribed to the broadcast topic;

query the subscription table to identify the devices subscribed to the broadcast topic in response to receiving the publication message;

send the publication message to the devices, in network connection with the first device gateway, which are identified as being subscribed to the broadcast topic; and

send the publication message to a second device gateway included in the plurality of device gateways to allow the publication message to be distributed to the devices connected to the second device gateway subscribed to the broadcast topic.

18. The non-transitory machine readable storage medium as in claim 17, wherein the instructions that when executed by the processor further receive a request to create a cross-account broadcast topic for a first customer account, wherein the request specifies a second customer account from which devices are authorized to subscribe to the cross-account broadcast topic.

19. The non-transitory machine readable storage medium in claim 18, wherein the instructions that when executed by the processor further:

receive a request from a device associated with the second customer account to subscribe to the cross-account broadcast topic associated with the first customer account;

determine that the second customer account is authorized to subscribe to the cross-account broadcast topic; and

subscribe the device associated with the second customer account to the cross-account broadcast topic.

20. The non-transitory machine readable storage medium in claim 19, wherein the instructions that when executed by the processor further link the device associated with the second customer account with the first customer account and the cross-account broadcast topic in the subscription table.