Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
2000-02-22
2001-06-19
Alam, Hosain T. (Department: 2172)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C707S793000, C707S793000, C707S793000, C712S203000, C712S213000, C709S218000, C709S224000, C709S227000, C709S231000, C709S241000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06249787
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
This invention relates generally to computer networks, and more particularly to the efficient transmission, storage and display of images and other objects over computer networks.
BACKGROUND ART
The Internet has, of late, become extremely popular. The origins of the Internet date back several decades to a U.S. government sponsored military/research/business wide area network (WAN) that was designed to remain operational even in the event of the catastrophe, e.g. a major earthquake or a nuclear war. To accomplish this goal, robust protocols and systems were developed which allowed a geographically distributed collection of computer systems to be connected as a WAN such that the loss of a particular computer, or group or computers, would not preclude the continued communication among the remaining computers.
While the use of Internet has been prevalent for many years now, its use has been limited by the arcane and difficult commands required to access the various computers on the network. To address this problem, a protocol known as the “World Wide Web” or “WWW” was developed to provide an easier and more user-friendly interface for the Interface. With the World Wide Web, an entity having a domain name creates a “web page” or “page” which can provide information and, to a limited degree, some interactivity.
A computer user can “browse”, i.e. navigate around, the WWW by utilizing a suitable web browser and a network gateway (e.g., an Internet Service Provider (ISP)). For example, UUNET, America Online, and Global Village all provide Internet access. Currently, the most popular web browser, known as the Netscape® Navigator® is made by Netscape Corporation of Mountain View, Calif. The web browser allows a user to specify or search for a web page on the WWW, and then retrieves and displays web pages on the user's computer screen.
The Internet is based upon a transmission protocol known as “Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol” (or “TCP/IP” for short), which sends packets of data between a host machine, e.g. a server computer on the Internet, and a client machine, e.g. a user's personal computer connected to the Internet. The WWW is an Internet interface protocol which is supported by the same TCP/IP transmission protocol. Intranets are private networks based upon Internet standards, and have become quite common for managing information and communications within an organization. Intranets, since they subscribe to Internet standards, can use the same web browser and web serve software as used on the Internet.
With a rapid proliferation of the Internet and Intranets, much attention has been given to performance issues. In particular, the issue of “bandwidth,” i.e. the rate at which data can be moved within the network system, has been the focus of a considerable amount of research and development. As an example, many users still connect to the Internet through a 28.8 Kbits/second modem. This can make the “downloading” of large amounts of information (e.g., photographs, graphics, video, and audio) painfully slow. There are times when a complex web page, including a number of high resolution images or other objects, can take several minutes to download from the host machine to client machine.
The prior art addresses bandwidth limitations in Internet and Intranets by, essentially, increasing bandwidth. This can be accomplished through higher speed data transmission and through compression techniques. For example, instead of using standard analog telephone lines, much faster digital ISDN or T1 lines can be used. However, these faster digital telephone lines can be quite expensive. Higher speed modems, such as cable modems, are also under development. In addition, compression techniques can make a standard 28.8 Kbit modem appear to transmit data at twice that speed.
While increasing bandwidth, improving data compression, etc. has been helpful in improving Internet and Intranet performance, other performance-robbing characteristics of Internet/Intranet performance have only been partially addressed. One example is the “latency” problem where TCP/IP packets are routed through a number of routers, and perhaps servers or other devices (collectively referred to herein as “nodes”) on their journey between the host machine and the client machine, where each node adds its own delay. Another example is the “connect” problem wherein each connection between host machine and client machine introduces a sometimes considerable delay.
In
FIG. 1
, a simplified representation of an Internet
10
and a client machine
12
is shown. Client machines are typically personal computers made to the IBM-PC standards and running a Microsoft Windows operating system, Apple Macintosh computer systems, or work stations made by Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard Company, and the like. Client machine
12
is coupled to the Internet
10
by a data link
14
, such as an analog or digital telephone line (with appropriate modem and/or other interface). The client typically makes its initial connection with an Internet Service Provider (ISP)
16
A, which is connected to the Internet
10
with one or more data links
18
. The ISP
16
A is one form of “node”
16
. Nodes on the Internet comprise computers of various sizes and types, although they mostly tend to run some variant of the Unix operating system. There are nodes on the Internet that are personal computers, workstations, minicomputers, and mainframe computers and specialized computers known as routers and switches. A host computer
16
B (which is another form of node
16
) resides somewhere within the Internet
10
, and may be directly coupled to the ISP
16
A or may be coupled to ISP
16
A via a number of data links
18
and nodes
16
. The various nodes are computers that can be used to route TCP/IP packages towards their final destination. Intranets are designed in a similar fashion as the illustrated Internet
10
.
A typical web browsing session is as follows, whether on the Internet, on an Intranet or on a combination of the two. A user of a client machine
12
, such as a personal computer, starts a web browser application program. The manufacture and use of computers, such as client machine
12
and host machine
16
B are well known to those skilled in the art.
As mentioned previously, the Netscape Navigator web browser is currently the most popular web browser. The browser is used to connect the client machine
12
to the Internet
10
via the ISP
16
A. The client machine and the ISP
16
A communicate with each other by means of the aforementioned well-known TCP/IP protocol. When the ISP
16
A detects a connection request from the client machine
12
in the form of a “Uniform Resource Locator” or URL
20
, the connection request is routed by the Internet
10
to the host
16
B providing that URL. The host
16
B receives the connection request and the URL of the desired page, and transmits the page to the ISP
16
A in TCP/IP packets. The ISP then sends a page
22
in HyperText Mark-Up Language (HTML) to the client
12
. Most web browser software cache recent pages in an associated hard disk
24
so that if the same URL is requested in the future, the data will be quickly and locally available to the client computer
12
.
The connection process to a host machine on the Internet or Intranet can be quite time consuming. For example, a busy Internet site can take several seconds or even minutes to create a connection with a client machine, particularly during peak traffic times. This is due, in part, to the inherent latency of the connection process through the Internet but is more often due to the relative slowness of the host machine to respond to a connection request. This is because the host machine can only respond to a finite number of simultaneous requests for connections from client machines.
To partially address this connection delay problem, most web browsers, as mentioned previously, allow for caching of recently accessed pages on the hard disk
24
of the personal computer. For example, with reference to
FIG. 1
, the
Ahlstrom John K.
Hickman Paul L.
Schleimer Stephen I.
Alam Hosain T.
Beyer Weaver & Thomas LLP
Cisco Systems Inc.
Corrielus Jean M.
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