Sending inter-server notifications using an out-of-band communications protocol

• US 20060224744A1
• Filed: 07/26/2005
• Published: 10/05/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Rao, Deepak P., Cox, Shaun D.
• Granted Patent: US 7,606,904 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/227
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1008 based on parameters of servers, e.g. available memory or workload monitoring of computer activity G06F11/30
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/54 Presence management, e.g. monitoring or registration for receipt of user log-on information, or the connection status of the users

Abstract

A method and system for sending notifications from servers of a server pool to clients is provided. The notification system determines when an in-band notification is to be sent to clients. The notification system identifies a distinguished server for each client that is to send the in-band notification to that client. The notification system then sends an out-of-band notification to the distinguished server of each client indicating that an in-band notification is to be sent to the client. When the distinguished server receives the out-of-band notification, the distinguished server then sends an in-band notification to the client.

Claims

1. A method in a server pool for sending notifications, the method comprising:

determining that an in-band notification is to be sent to clients;

identifying a distinguished server for each client; and

sending an out-of-band notification to each distinguished server of each client, the out-of-band notification indicating that the distinguished server is to send an in-band notification to the client.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the in-band notification uses a session initiation protocol and the out-of-band notification uses a remote procedure call protocol.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein both the in-band and out-of-band notifications are encrypted.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the notification indicates that presence information of a publisher has been updated.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein an out-of-band notification identifies multiple clients that are to receive an out-of-band notification and that have the same distinguished server.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein a distinguished server is a server from which a client is to receive all notifications from the server pool.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the in-band notification uses a session initiation protocol and the out-of-band notification uses a remote procedure call protocol, wherein the notification indicates that presence information of a publisher has been updated, wherein the out-of-band notification identifies multiple clients that are to receive the notification and that have the same distinguished server, and wherein the distinguished server is a server from which a client is to receive all notifications from the server pool.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein a load balancer assigns distinguished servers to clients.

9. A computer-readable medium containing instructions for controlling a server to send notifications to clients, by a method comprising:

determining that a notification is to be sent to clients;

identifying a distinguished server for each client; and

sending a batched notification to an identified distinguished server, the batched notification indicating that the distinguished server is to send a notification to the clients who are assigned to that distinguished server.

10. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein the batched notification identifies the clients assigned to that distinguished server to whom notifications are to be sent.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein batched notifications to servers and notifications to clients are sent using an in-band protocol.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 11 wherein the in-band protocol is a session initiation protocol.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein notifications to clients are sent using an in-band protocol and batched notifications to servers are sent using an out-of-band protocol.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 13 wherein the in-band protocol is a session initiation protocol and the out-of-band protocol is a remote procedure call protocol.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein the server and a distinguished server are in the same server pool.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein the server and a distinguished server are in different server pools.

17. A server of a server pool for sending notifications of changes in presence information of a publisher to subscribers to the presence information of the publisher, the server comprising:

a component that receives from a publisher via a session initiation protocol a request to update presence information of the publisher that identifies subscribers to the presence information of the publisher, that identifies a home server of each subscriber, and that sends via a remote procedure call protocol a batched notification to each identified home server indicating to notify subscribers of the presence information of the publisher; and

a component that receives via the remote procedure call protocol a batched notification and that sends via the session initiation protocol a notification that indicates the updated presence information to each subscriber identified in the batched notification.

18. The server of claim 17 wherein the notifications sent via the session initiation protocol and the batched notifications sent via the remote procedure call protocol are encrypted.

19. The server of claim 17 including a component that receives requests from subscribers to subscribe to the presence information of a publisher.

20. The server of claim 17 wherein the component that receives a request to update presence information accesses a database that contains the presence information of a publisher, that maintains a list of subscribers to the publisher, and that contains a mapping of subscribers to home servers.