Architecture for building a peer to peer messaging platform

• US 20060212582A1
• Filed: 03/15/2005
• Published: 09/21/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Gupta, Ashish, Rao, Ravi T., Dewey, Jeremy Lee, Iyer, Padmini Chandrasekhar
• Granted Patent: US 7,912,959 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/227
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/18 for broadcast or conference , e.g. multicast
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/32 Flooding denial of service attacks H04L63/1458
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/104 Peer-to-peer [P2P] networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1053 with pre-configuration of logical or physical connections with a determined number of other peers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/14 Session management for real-time applications in data packet communications networks H04L65/1066

Abstract

The claimed system is a multicast programming model for implementation on top of a service oriented framework, specifically a service oriented messaging system. It provides application-layer multicast capability without requiring an IP multicast infrastructure. The claimed system enables service oriented applications to implement multicasting communications easily and efficiently

Claims

1. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for providing multicast peer to peer meshing functionality to a service oriented messaging system comprising:

creating a PeerChannelFactory object when an application initiates a connection to a designated mesh;

creating a PeerChannel object associated with the PeerChannelFactory, wherein the PeerChannel object establishes a connection to a PeerNode object that is connected to the mesh, wherein the application communicates with the mesh via the PeerNode object.

2. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising a service oriented messaging system comprising a port object, a channel object, a transport object and a message object, wherein the message object comprises a Simple Object Access Protocol (“

SOAP”

) based message, and further wherein a PeerNode uses the channel object, the port object, the transport object, and the message object when communicating with another PeerNode.

3. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the mesh comprises a first PeerNode object connected to a second PeerNode object by at least one neighbor channel.

4. The computer-readable medium of claim 3, wherein the neighbor channel comprises a Neighbor object that provides a method for communication between two PeerNodes.

5. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein a first PeerNode object is associated with one of a NeighborManager object, a Maintainer object, a Connector object, a Flooder object, and a Synchronizer object.

6. The computer-readable medium of claim 5, wherein the NeighborManager object implements a node service and comprises a collection of Neighbor objects that provide channel communication functions.

7. The computer-readable medium of claim 5, wherein the Connector object sends one of a connection and a disconnection request to a second PeerNode, and receives one of a connection granted and connection refused message from the second PeerNode.

8. The computer-readable medium of claim 5, wherein the Flooder comprises at least one of:

a method for encapsulating an inner node message into an outer tunneling message for transport between neighbor PeerNodes;

a method for extracting an inner node message from an outer tunneling message received by a PeerNode;

a method for routing a received inner node message to an internal PeerNode object if the inner node message is an internal mesh message and routing an inner node message to a PeerChannel if the inner node message is a service intended message;

9. The computer-readable medium of claim 8, wherein the Flooder comprises a table of previously encountered messages, and a method that floods a received message if the table does not contain the received message and closes the message if the table does contain the received message.

10. The computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the Flooder is associated with a propagation filter, and wherein the method that floods a received message if the table does not contain the received message, closes the message if the message matches a filter criteria of the propagation filter.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 5, wherein the Synchronizer object comprises a method for synchronizing mesh state information comprising retrieving mesh state data from the second PeerNode and calling a Maintainer object of the first PeerNode to process the retrieved state data.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the Maintainer object compares the retrieved mesh state data and stored mesh state data of the first PeerNode, and replaces older stored mesh data with newer mesh state data, and further wherein the Maintainer object sends a message to a second PeerNode containing any newer mesh state data.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 5, wherein the Maintainer object stores a mesh signature and a collection of mesh contact nodes, and wherein each PeerNode is associated with a node ID and wherein the mesh signature is the lowest node ID in a mesh and further wherein the mesh signature is determined based on

having a first PeerNode in a mesh publish its mesh signature;

and

having a second PeerNode publish its mesh signature only after the second PeerNode waits a backoff period that is exponentially proportional to its node ID and only if the second PeerNode node ID is lower than any received mesh signature publication that the second PeerNode has received, wherein a last published node ID is the mesh signature.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the Maintainer object compares a received mesh signature to a stored mesh signature and initiates a new connection attempt when the received mesh signature does not match the stored mesh signature.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the Maintainer object initiates a new connection attempt when the collection of mesh contact nodes is below a minimum value, refuses a connection attempt from a second PeerNode when the collection of mesh contact nodes is above a maximum value, and disconnects a least useful PeerNode when the collection of mesh contact nodes is above a predetermined ideal value.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising a PeerListenerFactory object, wherein the PeerListenerFactory object is associated with a PeerNode object and creates a PeerListener object having filter criteria, and further wherein the PeerListener object creates a PeerChannel object when a message is received by the PeerNode that matches the filter criteria of the PeerListener.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the PeerNode comprises a Resolver object having a method for resolving a mesh name into a uniform resource identifier (“

URI”

), and further wherein the URI is associated with an IP address.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the Resolver maintains a list of mesh IDs and mesh services, and their corresponding URIs.

19. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the PeerNode comprises a list of services of the first PeerNode and at least one of

a method that advertises the list of services to the second PeerNode;

a method that adds a service to the list;

a method that removes a service from the list; and

a method that requests a service list from a second PeerNode, wherein a service of the first PeerNode creates a non-mesh communication channel with the second PeerNode based on an entry in the service list of the second PeerNode.

20. A computer system comprising:

an operating system having a service oriented application framework, wherein the service oriented application framework comprises a message system having at least one of a port object, a base channel object, a transport object, and a message object;

a service hosted by the operating system; and

a peer channel object associated with the service, wherein the peer channel object establishes a connection to a peer node object that is connected to a mesh, wherein the service communicates with the mesh via the peer node object, and wherein the peer node object uses at least one of the base channel object, the port object, the transport object, and the message object when communicating with another PeerNode.