Detection and reporting of keepalive messages for optimization of keepalive traffic in a mobile network

• US 9,756,677 B2
• Filed: 02/27/2017
• Issued: 09/05/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/2013
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Seven Networks LLC (SoftBank Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Seven Networks LLC (SoftBank Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Backholm, Ari, Fleming, Michael, Kokhanovskyi, Andrii, Yoon, Sungwook
• Primary Examiner(s): Javaid, Jamal
• Application Number:
  US15/443,424
• Publication Number:
  US 20170171906A1
• Time in Patent Office: 190 Days
• Field of Search: 370338, 370229, 370230, 370252, 370401
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/10 Active monitoring, e.g. heartbeat, ping or trace-route
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/16 Implementation or adaptation of Internet protocol [IP], of transmission control protocol [TCP] or of user datagram protocol [UDP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/25 Maintenance of established connections

Abstract

Detection of network transactions or keepalives for maintaining long lived connections are disclosed. A keepalive detector can detect keepalive traffic based on keepalive parameters determined from an analysis of socket level network communication log data that record data transfer events including data sent from mobile applications or clients on a mobile device and data received by the mobile applications or clients on the mobile device, timing characteristics, protocol types, etc. Various statistical analyses can be performed on the network communication data to detect keepalives, taking into account variability in intervals of the data transfer events and sizes of data sent and received on each event. The keepalive detector can also detect keepalives from stream data on a mobile device by analyzing socket level communication messages including timing characteristics and amount of data transferred to detect keepalives and report keepalives using a data structure.

Claims

1. A method of detecting keepalives from stream data on a mobile device, comprising:

detecting a message including stream data for a socket;

based on information in the message, determining whether to create or update a connection object, the connection object associated with a data structure including an identifier for the connection object and time the socket was created;

evaluating the connection object to determine whether a keepalive is detected, the data structure further including a flag for indicating whether the keepalive was detected.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the data structure further includes a keepalive weight that is initialized to a value on creation of the connection object and incremented each time the connection object is updated.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

analyzing the message to determine time the socket was created;

creating the connection object when the socket was created was more than an amount of given time ago.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

analyzing the message to determine the information including an amount of data transferred from a client to a server and from the server to the client and timing characteristics; and

updating the connection object when the amount of data transferred is less than a threshold amount and the timing characteristics indicates that a time interval since the last data transfer event occurred more than a threshold interval.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein evaluating the connection object to determine whether the keepalive is detected includes evaluating the keepalive weight of the connection object upon updating the connection object to determine whether the keepalive weight is higher than a threshold.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

reporting changes to the connection object including a formatted form of the data structure to the server.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein a local proxy on the mobile device detects the keepalives from the stream data.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the stream data is over a Transport Control Protocol.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

aligning at least some of the keepalives to optimize transfer of the at least some of the keepalives to a wireless network.

10. A mobile device comprising:

a memory; and

a processor, the processor configured for

detecting a message including stream data for a socket;

based on information in the message, determining whether to create or update a connection object, the connection object associated with a data structure including an identifier for the connection object and time the socket was created;

evaluating the connection object to determine whether a keepalive is detected, the data structure further including a flag for indicating whether the keepalive was detected.

11. The mobile device of claim 10, wherein the data structure further includes a keepalive weight that is initialized to a value on creation of the connection object and incremented each time the connection object is updated.

12. The mobile device of claim 10, further comprising:

analyzing the message to determine time the socket was created;

creating the connection object when the socket was created was more than an amount of given time ago.

13. The mobile device of claim 10, further comprising:

analyzing the message to determine the information including an amount of data transferred from a client to a server and from the server to the client and timing characteristics; and

updating the connection object when the amount of data transferred is less than a threshold amount and the timing characteristics indicates that a time interval since the last data transfer event occurred more than a threshold interval.

14. The mobile device of claim 13, wherein evaluating the connection object to determine whether the keepalive is detected includes evaluating a keepalive weight of the connection object upon updating the connection object to determine whether the keepalive weight is higher than a threshold.

15. The mobile device of claim 14, further comprising:

reporting changes to the connection object including a formatted form of the data structure to the server.

16. The mobile device of claim 10, wherein a local proxy on the mobile device detects the keepalives from the stream data.

17. The mobile device of claim 10, wherein the stream data is over a Transport Control Protocol.

18. The mobile device of claim 10, further comprising:

aligning at least some of the keepalives to optimize transfer of the at least some of the keepalives to a wireless network.