EXTENDING DELAY TOLERANCE OF MOBILE APPLICATIONS FOR OPTIMIZING MOBILE TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT

• US 20150023162A1
• Filed: 01/03/2014
• Published: 01/22/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 07/22/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Seven Networks LLC (SoftBank Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Seven Networks Inc
• Inventors: Alisawi, Rami, Srinivasan, Suresh, Backholm, Ari, Lee, Yuan Kang, Sengupta, Chaitali, Jukar, Tejas
• Granted Patent: US 9,603,049 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/230
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/2475 for supporting traffic characterised by the type of applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/566 Grouping or aggregating service requests, e.g. for unified processing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/61 taking into account QoS or priority requirements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/0236 radio quality, e.g. interference, losses or delay
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/0289 Congestion control load shedding arrangements in network planning H04W16/08; performing reselection for handling the traffic H04W36/22; wireless traffic scheduling H04W72/12
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/10 Connection setup
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/25 Maintenance of established connections
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/28 Discontinuous transmission [DTX]; Discontinuous reception [DRX]
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/00 Reducing energy consumption in communication networks
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/70 in wireless communication networks

Abstract

Systems and methods for extending delay tolerance of mobile applications to optimize mobile traffic management are disclosed. In a mobile device, network stack timers or protocol stack timers are modified to extend delay tolerance of applications for radio alignment. In an embodiment, tolerance of mobile applications on a mobile device to delay in establishing a connection to a wireless network is extended by an application or a local proxy on a mobile device. Based on the tolerance that is extended, requests intercepted from the mobile applications are aggregated, over a period of time, such that transfer of the requests intercepted during the period of time is delayed. This minimizes the number of times the mobile device connects to the network, reducing the power consumption on the mobile device and unnecessary signaling in the network.

Claims

1. A method for managing mobile traffic in a mobile device, comprising:

extending tolerance of mobile applications on a mobile device to delay in establishing a connection to a wireless network;

based on the tolerance that is extended, aggregating, over a period of time, requests intercepted from the mobile applications such that transfer of the requests intercepted during the period of time is delayed.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the transfer of the requests intercepted during the period of time is delayed without the mobile applications being aware.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein extending the tolerance of the mobile applications to delay further comprises increasing connection timeouts associated with system timers on which the mobile applications rely when establishing a connection to the wireless network.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the system timers include protocol-specific timers or network stack timers.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the connection timeouts associated with the protocol-specific timers are modified by a framework wrapper in the mobile device.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the protocol-specific timers are associated with a protocol over which the mobile applications communicate.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the protocol includes Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) or Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP).

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the period of time over which the requests are aggregated is variable.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the period of time over which the requests are aggregated is one of:

a maximum period of time defined by a gating parameter or the maximum period of time adjusted by an occurrence of an event that causes a radio on the mobile device to turn on or change from low power mode to high power mode.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the period of time is dynamically determined based on a policy.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the period of time is dynamically determined based on whether a screen of the mobile device is on or off.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

responsive to establishment of a connection to the wireless network at the end of the period of time, transferring the requests aggregated over the period of time over the wireless network to respective servers to which the requests are directed.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

receiving responses to at least some of the requests from respective servers;

providing the responses to respective mobile applications, such that time elapsed between issuing of the requests and receiving of the responses is within the tolerance of the mobile applications to delay that is extended.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein a local proxy on the mobile device intercepts the requests from the mobile applications to aggregate the requests over the period of time.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein a local proxy on the mobile device determines connection timeouts to extend the tolerance of the mobile applications to delay.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein a local proxy on the mobile device provides connection timeouts to the mobile applications to extend the tolerance of the mobile applications to delay.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein the requests are non-user interactive traffic from the mobile applications.

18. The method of claim 1, wherein the requests are low priority or non-time critical requests from the mobile applications.

19. A system for managing mobile traffic in a mobile device, comprising:

means for intercepting outgoing traffic associated with mobile applications on the mobile device;

means for extending delay tolerance impacting the mobile applications; and

means for bundling the outgoing traffic for radio alignment.

20. The system of claim 19, further comprising:

means for transferring the outgoing traffic that are bundled at a next radio event.

21. The system of claim 19, wherein the delay tolerance impacting the mobile applications is extended in an application-unaware manner.

22. The system of claim 19, further comprising:

means for modifying connection timeouts associated with system timers on which the mobile applications rely to extend the delay tolerance.

23. The system of claim 22, wherein the system timers include at least one of protocol-specific timers or network stack timers, and wherein the protocol-specific timers are specific to protocols associated with the mobile applications.

24. The system of claim 23, wherein the protocols include Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) or Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) protocols.

25. The system of claim 23, wherein the network stack timers are applicable to the non-user interactive traffic over Transport Control Protocol (TCP) or User Datagram Protocol (UDP).

26. The system of claim 19, wherein the next radio event occurs when user interactive traffic is detected, when screen of the mobile device is turned on or when a predefined period of time ends.

27. A method for managing mobile traffic in a mobile device, comprising:

extending delay tolerance impacting mobile applications on the mobile device to manage incoming and outgoing traffic;

accumulating the outgoing traffic until the next radio event such that the incoming traffic can be received at the mobile device and the outgoing traffic that is accumulated can be transferred to one or more remote destinations using the same radio event.

28. The method of claim 27, wherein the radio event is controlled by a local proxy on the mobile device to allow transfer of the outgoing traffic and receiving of the incoming traffic to occur over the same connection to a wireless network.

29. The method of claim 27, wherein the mobile applications are selectively configured for mobile traffic management.

30. The method of claim 27, wherein the radio event is triggered when user-interactive traffic is detected.

31. The method of claim 27, wherein the radio event is triggered when a screen on the mobile device is turned on.

32. The method of claim 27, wherein the radio event is triggered to receive data from a remote server.

33. The method of claim 27, wherein extending the delay tolerance includes delaying socket creation.

34. The method of claim 27, wherein extending the delay tolerance includes keeping an existing socket open.

35. The method of claim 27, wherein extending the delay tolerance includes increasing timeouts for protocol-specific timers associated with the incoming and outgoing traffic.

36. The method of claim 27, wherein extending the delay tolerance includes modifying protocol-specific timers for some of the incoming and outgoing traffic that rely on the protocol-specific timers and modifying network stack timers for some of the incoming and outgoing traffic that rely on network stack timers.

37. The method of claim 27, wherein the incoming traffic is accumulated at a proxy server residing in an operator network.