Abstract: A system and method for distributed function discovery with third party responses in a peer-to-peer network to facilitate efficient use of bandwidth and resources are disclosed. The method for secure automatic selection of a designated service provider in a peer-to-peer network generally comprises broadcasting a digitally signed election initiating packet containing a value for at least one criteria by a sending node, awaiting response time-out period expiry or receipt of a response election packet, broadcasting a digitally signed election result packet indicating the sending node is the designated service provider if response time-out period expiry occurs prior to receipt of a response election packet, and awaiting for, verifying, and storing election result in an election result broadcast if receipt of a response election packet occurs prior to expiry of response time-out period.

Abstract: An Internet client is provided with a SOCKS server. The client comprises a processor having an operating system, and a suite of one or more Internet tools. The SOCKS proxy server includes means for intercepting and servicing connection requests from the Internet tools. Preferably, the proxy server has a predetermined Internet Protocol address, preferably the loopback address. If the loopback address is not available on the protocol stack, a redirecting mechanism is used to redirect connection requests associated with stale IP addresses to a current IP address. The SOCKS server includes a filtering mechanism for filtering connection requests to particular servers, and a monitoring mechanism for monitoring network IP activity.

Abstract: A system and method for distributed function discovery with third party responses in a peer-to-peer network to facilitate efficient use of bandwidth and resources are disclosed. The method for facilitating distributed function discovery in a peer-to-peer network generally comprises receiving a broadcast request for a service function from a peer client at a peer server, locating information regarding a location remote to the peer server having the requested service function using a stored list of service functions locally stored at the peer server, and responding to the peer client with a response containing the location remote to the peer server if information on the requested service function is located.

Abstract: A method for performing differencing and updating between electronic files is provided. A byte-level file differencing algorithm receives two byte streams corresponding to an original file and a new file. The new file includes updated and revised versions of the original file. The file differencing algorithm determines a longest common sub-string (LCS) between the two byte streams and divides each of the two byte streams into sub-streams. The sub-streams include the LCS along with prefix and suffix sub-streams to the LCS. The file differencing algorithm then recursively determines an LCS and divides each sub-stream until a size of the sub-streams is less than a pre-specified size. Byte-level differences are then identified between each of the corresponding sub-streams. Further, the file differencing algorithm defines a protocol for structuring a delta file by using a set of operation codes and a variable length integer format to eliminate redundant information in the delta file.

Abstract: A communication architecture for performing work in a distributed computing environment involves client processes on client nodes sending work requests to a director. The director examines the work requests to determine one or more resources required to perform the work as well as one or more server nodes that can provide the required resources. The director then forwards the work requests to server processes on the server nodes that can provide the required resources. The work requests provided to the server processes specify that the work results are to be provided directly from the server processes to the client processes that made the work requests. The director maintains a table of resource data that specifies the services and/or resources that are provided by and/or made available on the server nodes in the distributed computing environment.

Abstract: A method of communications employs a communications protocols defining respective responses to predetermined events. The protocol is separated into a first group of behaviours defining responses to corresponding first, relatively frequently occurring, events, and a second group of behaviours defining responses to corresponding first, relatively frequently occurring, events, and a second group of behaviours defining responses to corresponding second, relatively infrequently occurring events. The first group is stored at a user communications terminal. At least the second group is stored at a store remote from the user terminal, and interconnected therewith via a communications channel. Communication is established from the user terminal using first events. On detecting an event other than one of said the first events at the user terminal, event holding data is signaled from the store to the user terminal; and communication is established from the user terminal using the event-handling data.

Abstract: Techniques are provided for predicting the usage of a document collection given proximal cue information in the documents, a starting point and the user's information needs. A document collection topology matrix is created indicating links between document content portions. The link entry documents are analyzed for proximal cue words based on link URL, surrounding text and title. For image links, the connected to document information may also be used. Proximal cue words are added to a matrix relating proximal cue words and links. The proximal scent matrix indicates a similarity between the user's information need and the proximal cue word matrix. A distal scent information matrix is also calculated using distal document information and combined with the proximal scent matrix. Spreading activation is then applied to the resulting matrix using the starting location for a requested number of iterations and resulting in a predicted usage of the document collection.

Abstract: A system for adding multiple GPE blocks (in addition to the system/root GPE block device) to a computing system by creating a device entry in the ACPI namespace, and using a _CRS object to describe the system resources consumed by the device is described. The GPE block device may then access associated hardware devices through a well known mechanism (either I/O or Memory Mapped accesses). By creating additional GPE block devices within the ACPI namespace, general purpose events may be delivered using more traditional hardware interrupt mechanisms than with existing systems (e.g., wiring GPE blocks together). Moreover, by putting GPE block devices in the ACPI namespace, hardware components having hardware registers may be “hot plugged” to the computing system.

Abstract: A network system connects with a number of individual processes that can mutually send and receive a broadcast message specified with no destination and a message specified with a specific process and that can change their states to parent or child processes. When a first process is a parent process and second through fourth processes are child processes, the four processes constitute a group, in which each of child processes stores the parent process, and the parent process stores each of child processes that store the parent process itself. When a new process that is in another group is connected to this group, the parent process exchanges a message with the new process for negotiation to determine either whether to be a parent process or to change to a child process.

Abstract: A proxy-server system (15) connected preferably to a computer-telephone system (10) intercepts, processes, and analyzes as traffic-analysis results (68A-C) all forms of real- and non-real-time electronic communication passing over the network in the form of raw traffic data (61). The proxy-server system normalizes each communication into the measure of time needed by recipient(s) of the communication to understand the information contained therein. Once normalized, the data may be aggregated into summary reports (69A-C). As part of the analysis, the aggregated communication records are compared with user-defined rules to provide alerts if the individual or aggregated durations exceed boundaries set by the rules. In one embodiment, the summary reports may be integrated with general-ledger data (94) and other raw business data (74) via a relational database (72) to derive more accurate records of activity-based-costing information (76).

Abstract: A method of delivering a formatted document over a communications network, providing a client computer connected to the network and providing a server computer connected to the network such that the client computer is in data communication with the server computer. The client computer includes a browser program operating thereon and the server computer is provided with an information server program operating thereon. A template file is provided in data communication with the information server program of the server computer and includes a programming script, upon initiation of which the document is created having information of a pre-selected category arranged thereon according to a pre-determined layout thereof. The information is received from a data source and arranged on the document according to the pre-determined layout.

Abstract: The present invention improves a network forwarding device, such as a router, in a computer network system. When an address to which a received packet is to be forwarded is searched for based on path information, a path search data structure is changed to the one in which, in a 2-branch tree search in which a destination address of the received packet is checked, one bit at a time beginning at a highest-order bit, p (p is an integer equal to or larger than 2) levels are combined into one 2P-branch tree to perform a search of the p levels of the 2-branch tree as a one-level search. This data structure speeds up path search processing.

Abstract: A system and method using inheritance for the configuration, management, and/or monitoring of computer applications and devices via a computer network are disclosed. The method generally comprises calculating control settings to be enforced by an end node corresponding to a device of the network of devices, the control settings being calculated by the corresponding device. The control settings to be enforced by the end node are applicable to the device and the resources of the device. The calculation is performed by the end node or device by accessing data stored in a network directory defining a hierarchical tree structure containing nodes corresponding to the network of devices and defining control settings corresponding to and to be enforced upon the resources available to the devices. The control settings corresponding to the resources of each device are selectively inherited down the hierarchical tree structure of the network directory.

Abstract: A distributed computer environment (DCE) is disclosed that provides event globalizing of at least one event at one server in the DCE to other servers within said DCE as well as maintains a record of specific event activity over the DCE. The maintenance of the records is performed by storing a global event file comprising a list of events and a corresponding list of servers in order to identify which of the servers should receive which events, storing a local event registry comprising a list of events and a corresponding list of local event consumers in order to identify which of the local event consumers should receive which events, identifying specific events within the list of events to be monitored for a specific purpose, monitoring said specific events as they occur over the DCE, notifying a specific local event consumer of the occurrence of the specific events, and recording a log of event activity involving only the specific events.