Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer-to-computer protocol implementing – Computer-to-computer data transfer regulating
Utility Patent
1998-12-09
2001-01-02
Luu, Le Hien (Department: 2756)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Computer-to-computer protocol implementing
Computer-to-computer data transfer regulating
C709S233000, C709S237000
Utility Patent
active
06170016
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates in general to computer software, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for down-loading data of a Web page from WWW server via the Internet.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
An example of software for a Web (or WWW) browser which enables access to a Web (or WWW; World Wide Web) server via a network to download data (contents) of a Web (WWW) page held in the Web server is disclosed in PUPA 9-185633 for perusal by a user.
Among such type of browsers, WEBLOCATOR (trademark of Lotus Corporation) is known. This browser has a function for accepting registration of a URL (a unique address of a Web page; uniform resource locator) beforehand and cyclically gets access to Web servers holding Web pages of the registered URL (the phrase “to get access to Web servers holding Web pages of the registered URL” is hereinafter expressed as “to get access to a registered URL”, etc., for simplification of description) for automatically obtaining the contents of the Web pages.
Another Web browser, INTERNET EXPLORER 4.0 (trademark of Microsoft Corporation), accesses a preregistered URL to automatically get the content of a Web page of the registered URL (similarly, the phrase “the content of a Web page of the registered URL” is hereinafter expressed as “registered URL content”, etc., for simplification of description) in order to periodically update a cache memory (actually, implemented by software using an existing memory rather than a memory specialized for the browser which is provided in a computer on the client side) of the Web browser used for storing the registered URL content.
However, the process of getting and displaying in the foreground, URL content designated by a user is executed asynchronously with a process of automatically getting (in the background) preregistered URL content in these types of Web browsers. Therefore, when a foreground process is executing, a background process may also be started automatically by a timer resulting in a parallel execution of two processes. In this situation, it may take a long time to get user designated content because the two processes may compete with each other due to limited transmission capacity of a communication channel or the processing capacity of a CPU.
Further, because a background process is processed for one URL content at a time even when there is no foreground process, the communication channel may not be effectively utilized in these Web browsers. For example, even when the transmission capacity of the communication channel is 56 kbps, the transmission capacity is mostly wasted and the communication channel can not be utilized effectively if the URL content to be processed in background is transmitted to the client side only at several kbps due to the reason in the Web server side.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In view of the above described problems, the present invention provides a data communication apparatus and a method thereof which allows a URL user designated content to be obtained and displayed as promptly as possible.
It is also an object of this invention to provide a data communication apparatus and a method thereof which allows a process of getting and displaying a URL content designated by a user to be processed synchronously with a process of getting a URL content registered beforehand without these processes scrambling for resources in the client side.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a data communication apparatus and a method thereof which allows a plurality of URL contents registered beforehand to be obtained in parallel to utilize the transmission capacity of the communication channel effectively and allows many URL contents to be obtained from a Web server for a short time.
In order to achieve the above described objectives, the present invention provides a data communication apparatus connected to one or more data servers via a communication channel having a predetermined transmission capacity, in which each of the data servers comprise: request accepting means for transmitting one or more transmission data items in response to a request from the data communication apparatus and for accepting set up of one or more of the transmission data items which the data server may be possibly requested to transmit; data receiving means for receiving data including the transmission data item from each of the servers via the communication channel; transmission rate monitoring means for monitoring the transmission rate of the received data; first transmission request means for accepting designation of the transmission data and requesting either one of the data servers to transmit said designated transmission data; and second transmission request means for sequentially requesting either one of the data servers to transmit either one of the transmission data items, the set up of which was accepted when the transmission rate obtained by monitoring is within the range of the transmission capacity of the communication channel.
Preferably, the transmission data which each of the data servers transmits to the data communication apparatus is data of a Web page having a unique URL (uniform resource locator), the data server is a Web server which holds and transmits the Web page, the request accepting means accepts a URL indicating either one of the Web pages as information indicating the transmission data which the Web server may possibly be requested to transmit, the first transmission request means receives designation of the URL of an arbitrary Web page and requests either one of the Web servers holding the Web page to transmit the data of the Web page having the designated URL, and the second transmission request means sequentially requests either one of the Web servers holding the Web page to transmit data of the Web page having either one of the URLs, the set up of which was accepted when the transmission rate obtained by monitoring is within the range of the transmission capacity of the communication channel.
Preferably, each of the data servers transmitting the transmission data transmits a respective one of the transmission data items in response to the request from the data communication apparatus, and said second transmission request means disables the request to transmit the transmission data items other than the designated transmission data when requesting either one of the data servers to transmit the designated transmission data.
Preferably, the second transmission request means requests either one of the data servers to transmit next one of the transmission data items when the value of the transmission rate obtained by monitoring is less than a value of the transmission capacity of the communication channel minus a predetermined value.
The data communication apparatus of this invention operates as a Web browser which issues a request to a Web server to transmit a URL content according to a users operation and receives a URL content transmitted from the Web server in response to the request in a client computer which is connected via a data communication channel to a Web server which transmits (transfers) a URL content in response to a request.
In the data communication apparatus of this invention, when the user sets up on a client computer a URL of one or more Web pages to which the user frequently accesses, for example, the request accepting means accepts the set up as a URL content (transmission data) which the user may possibly request the Web server to transmit.
The data receiving means receives a URL content and other data transmitted from the Web server side to the client computer via the communication channel in response to the request.
The transmission rate monitoring means monitors the transmission rate of the data which the data receiving means received via the communication channel, and supplies the transmission rate, obtained as a result of monitoring, to the second transmission request means. When the data receiving means does not receive data other than a URL content, the value of the transmission rate monitored by the transmiss
Nakai Shinji
Narita Izuru
Suzuki Hidefumi
Tanaka Takayuki
Clay A. Bruce
International Business Machines Corp.
Luu Le Hien
Myers Bigel & Sibley & Sajovec
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