Abstract: A system and method for providing proximity notification to subscribers of a distributed system. The system includes mobile units having location receivers and stored information regarding target subscribers wherein upon a mobile unit reaching a given proximity criteria, the target subscriber is notified.

Abstract: An apparatus and means enabling a user to operate across multiple service domains using a single IDENTIFIER, ID. A Cross Service Association Domain mapping system is used to allow the desired IDENTIFIER and common user integration. A user is able to employ a single appropriate ID to access any of a plurality of services. The apparatus associates and relates all the IDENTIFIERs associated with each common user by maintaining an image of all the IDENTIFIERs for each user for all that user's applications which bridge the service and/or domain boundaries. Once a user is identified with any of the associated user IDENTIFIERs, the means allows the connection and/or routing to and from even otherwise disparate services. Included are a method, apparatus, and architecture which satisfies the above requirements while providing domain service interrelation and a common user image for the resulting interrelation. It provides for real time collaboration for cooperative, shared, and adaptive service network entities.

Abstract: An architecture for a low-end, high-performance switch subsystem allows the connection of a multitude of requests per link. The switch subsystem operates a cross-bar switch under the control of a controller, such as a personal computer, to connect selected ones of a plurality of input links to selected ones of a plurality of output links. A data structure for the switch subsystem is mapped to the memory of the controller. The switch subsystem comprises three switch servers, a request server, a connect server, and an acknowledge server, which perform in a pipelined fashion. An interface protocol for the switching subsystem may be adapted to various applications and allows a connect request to be either queued in the switch subsystem until the requested output link in available or the requestor is notified immediately if the requested output link is not available, so that alternate actions can be taken.