Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Remote data accessing – Accessing a remote server
Reexamination Certificate
1998-07-22
2001-03-06
Coulter, Kenneth R. (Department: 2758)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Remote data accessing
Accessing a remote server
C711S137000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06199107
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates generally to computer systems and the Internet, and more particularly to the downloading of network content.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The downloading of network content is often interrupted for a number of reasons, such as the user clicking on another link during the download. With progressive rendering, where a browser receives portions of the content as it is downloaded to provide partial images thereof, the user may even interrupt the download by clicking on a link that appears on a page being displayed during the download. Other reasons for the interruption of downloads include busy servers, gateways and/or service providers dropping connections, and transmission problems or the like that cause a download to be aborted.
If a user later requests download of content that was previously interrupted, the request starts over at the beginning. In general, this is because few network applications are capable of dealing with anything other than a complete response to a request for content. However, while this system works, restarting requests from the beginning has the drawback of re-transmitting data that was already sent. This increases client latency, particularly when the client is communicating over a low-bandwidth connection, increases the load on the server and takes up available network resources (e.g., available bandwidth).
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Briefly, the present invention provides a system and method of caching partial content and then using that cached content with a range of downloaded partial content to provide a complete response to a requesting application, in a manner that is essentially invisible to the application. To this end, a network interface stores partial server content in a local cache, and when it receives a request for server content corresponding to the partial content, determines one or more ranges of content data that are missing from the partial content. The interface requests the missing range (or ranges) of content data from the server, and when it receives the range data in response, merges the partial content in the cache with the range of content data received from the server. The interface transforms the response and the merged content into a full response including the entire amount of content requested by the application. Applications that let the user access content via a file-like interface may be given the illusion of random access to that content.
Other advantages will become apparent from the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the drawings, in which:
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Coulter Kenneth R.
Michalik & Wylie PLLC
Microsoft Corporation
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