Telecommunications – Radiotelephone system – Message storage or retrieval
Reexamination Certificate
1998-10-13
2001-09-11
Hunter, Daniel (Department: 2684)
Telecommunications
Radiotelephone system
Message storage or retrieval
C455S557000, C455S575100
Reexamination Certificate
active
06289212
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to providing electronic mail services, and more particularly, to providing electronic mail services during network unavailability.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic mail (email) is a popular way to communicate with others. Electronic mail systems operate to send messages over a network. The network can include internal networks and external (e.g., public) networks. An example of an internal network is a corporate network, and an example of an external network is the Internet. Typically, the electronic mail systems are corporate wide systems that reside on an internal network but also permit coupling to an external network so that messages can be exchanged with other electronic mail systems.
Recently, Internet-based electronic mail systems have been developed and implemented to provide electronic mail services over the Internet. In such systems, there is no internal network because the electronic mail system resides on the Internet. The electronic mail system has a mail server that interacts with users' network browsers so that users are able to request electronic mail services which are performed by the mail server. Typically, the mail server is a Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) server.
These Internet-based electronic mail systems have been implemented over wired networks as well as wireless networks. The availability of the network determines whether a client application (e.g., network browser) is in communication with the mail server. The client application operates on a local machine, whereas the mail server operates on a remote machine. In the case of wired networks, the local machine is, for example, a desktop computer. In the case of wireless networks, the local machine is a mobile device. For example, the mobile device can be a mobile telephone, a personal digital assistant (PDA) or a portable computer that has wireless access to the mail server.
One problem with the conventional electronic mail systems is that the operation of client applications are very much dependent on availability of their network. In other words, when the network is unavailable, the client applications can become “hung”, namely stopping further processing until a response from a remote server via the network is received. The network can be a wired network or a wireless network. Unavailability of a wired network can be due to high congestion or server failure. Unavailability of a wireless network can result from a user of a mobile device (supporting the client application) exceeding the geographic range of coverage. Unavailability also effectively results from a wireless network having high latencies, sporadic connectivity, high congestion or server failure. Because of the dependency of the operation of client applications on the availability of networks, client applications often have to wait for resources from a mail server. These wait times are unacceptably long when the network is unavailable to the client applications.
Computers or mobile devices are often provided with cache memories that temporarily store previously requested and obtained resources from remote servers. A cache memory is helpful in reducing the dependency of the computers or mobile devices on network availability. However, the cache memory is only helpful when the newly requested resource happens to reside in the cache memory. Hence, if the newly requested resource was not previously requested, then the newly requested resource would not be stored in the cache memory. Also, even if the newly requested resource were at one point in time stored in the cache memory, a reclamation or clean-up algorithm could have removed it from the cache memory to provide space for newer requested resources. Still further, the cache memory has to be relatively large to store all the resources likely to be requested. However, mobile devices (particularly hand-held mobile devices) need to keep cache memories relatively small due to power, cost and space limitations.
In the case of Internet-based electronic mail systems, a network browser operates on the computer or mobile device to enable access and manipulation their electronic mail residing on a mail server over the Internet. Since the network browsers often request electronic mail resources from remote mail servers over the network, the network browsers are particularly sensitive to network unavailability (e.g., due to out of coverage, high latencies, or sporadic connectivity). Consequently, even with a conventional cache memory, it is common for network unavailability to induce significant delays for the users of network browsers on computers or mobile devices.
Thus, there is a need for techniques to reduce delays faced by users seeking to perform electronic mail services with a mail server across a network.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Broadly speaking, the invention relates to improved techniques for providing electronic mail services across a network. A mail server and its clients communicate through the network. Although the mail server centrally manages the electronic mail services, the clients are able to themselves locally perform certain electronic mail services when the network is unavailable. Accordingly, clients seeking to perform electronic mail services no longer endure significant delays when the network is unavailable. The network can be at least temporarily unavailable for a variety of reasons, including: congestion, out of range, network failure, etc. The network can be wired or wireless. The invention is particularly well suited for networks having sporadic connectivity, high latencies or excessive traffic.
The invention can be implemented in numerous ways, including as a method, a computer readable medium, an apparatus, and a system. Several embodiments of the invention are discussed below.
As a mobile device for use with a wireless data communication network, an embodiment of the invention includes: a memory storage device that stores electronic mail resources; an electronic mail processor that performs an electronic mail operation with respect to the electronic mail resources stored in said memory storage device, and where the electronic mail operation can be carried out at said mobile device even when the wireless data communication network is not available to said mobile device; and a display device that displays at least a part of one or more of the electronic mail resources.
As a method for interacting with electronic mail messages on a mobile device, the mobile device being able to communicate with a mail server at least in part through a wireless data network, an embodiment of the invention includes the acts of: pre-loading electronic mail message resources into a storage device of the mobile device; receiving a request to view an electronic mail list; determining whether the electronic mail list is available from the storage device of the mobile device; receiving the electronic mail list from the storage device when the electronic mail list is determined to be available from the storage device of the mobile device; requesting and subsequently receiving the electronic mail list from the mail server when the electronic mail list is determined not to be available from the storage device of the mobile device; and displaying the received electronic mail list.
As a method for interacting with electronic mail messages on a mobile device, the mobile device being able to connect to a remote mail server through a wireless data network, an embodiment of the invention includes: displaying an electronic mail list on a display screen of the mobile device, the electronic mail list including one or more entries that identify particular electronic mail messages; selecting one of the entries of the electronic mail list being displayed on the display screen of the mobile device; performing an operation on the electronic mail message associated with the selected entry without delay due to the unavailability of the wireless data network to the mobile device; and asynchronously sending a
King Peter F.
Martin, Jr. Bruce K.
Schwartz Bruce V.
Smethers Paul A.
Stein Lawrence M.
Beyer Weaver & Thomas LLP
Chow C.
Hunter Daniel
Openwave Systems Inc.
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