Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for simulating a plurality of TCP connections directed toward an Internet site under test. The method includes activating a producer thread process. The producer thread process includes randomly determining an IP address and requesting a TCP layer process to make a TCP connection to the randomly determined IP address. The producer thread process does not block or wait for the TCP connection to be established. A consumer thread process is activated upon the occurrence of an event on the TCP connection. The consumer thread process includes retrieving information from the TCP connection and recording statistics related to the information.

Abstract: A proxy server is present in the path between the client and server, and intervenes in communication therebetween. Upon receiving a request from the client according to the HTTP protocol, the proxy server specifies a server based on the request, and determines the communication protocol to be used in the communication with the specified server. If the CM protocol is determined, the proxy server generates request data suitable for the CM protocol by adding necessary information, so as to implement the request contents included in the request, and communicates with the server. The proxy server sends back the processing result based on the request to the client according to the HTTP protocol.

Abstract: An automated and interactive system that allows a physician, counselor, teacher, employer or trainer to produce and send information, messages and/or questions to, or to elicit responses or information from, a client, patient, employee or student. The system consists of a client database and a client program that includes for each client individual information. The database and program are operated by a central computer that has the capability to, at preselected or delayed time periods, send messages, information and/or questions to the client through the use of a variety of transmission means. The client is provided a message retrieval system having a visual indication that a message is waiting to be retrieved.

Abstract: A network device receives packets from a first network segment, time stamps the packets as they arrive, and transmits the packets to a second network segment. By time stamping packets as they arrive, stale packets can be identified and discarded. A stale packet is a packet that has been pending in the network device longer than an active timeout interval, which may be varied based on network traffic levels to conserve network bandwidth. Packets may also be discarded to conserve packet buffer memory in the network device. For example, when an incoming packet arrives and an output buffer in which the packet must be stored is full, the output buffer is scanned to identify and discard packets that have exceeded a minimum timeout interval, thereby allowing the incoming packet to be stored in the output buffer. Many network protocols initiate the retransmission of packets after a timeout interval has expired and an acknowledge packet has not been received.

Abstract: In a multiple processing system comprising multiple communicatively interconnected nodes, each node having one or more processor units, multicast messages sent by a sender node will contain information that allows intended receiver nodes to check and determine the possibility that earlier-sent multicast messages from the sender node were not received by the receiver node.

Abstract: An automatic VLAN configuration information setting system comprising an automatic VLAN configuration information setting device and one or more switching hubs, for setting VLAN configuration information of the switching hubs, is proposed. When a terminal is added to or removed from an Ethernet port of a switching hub by the user, a VLAN alteration request section of the switching hub detects the event, and a VLAN alteration request is transmitted to the automatic VLAN configuration information setting device. In a database of the automatic VLAN configuration information setting device, VLAN detailed information concerning all the VLANs managed by the automatic VLAN configuration information setting device is stored. A VLAN configuration instruction text editing section of the automatic VLAN configuration information setting device edits a VLAN configuration instruction text (an instruction scenario) by referring to the VLAN alteration request and the VLAN detailed information.

Abstract: A system and method of achieving network separation within a computing system having a plurality of network interfaces. A plurality of burbs or regions is defined, wherein the plurality of burbs includes a first and a second burb and wherein each burb includes a protocol stack. Each of the plurality of network interfaces is assigned to one of the plurality of burbs and more than one network interface can be assigned to a particular burb. Processes are bound to specific burbs when they try to access that burb's protocol stack and communication between processes assigned to different burbs is restricted so that a communication between a process bound to one burb must pass through a proxy before being sent to a different burb.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for providing visualization of performance of a distributed network. The method provides a user interface allowing easy visualization of the performance together with methods and apparatus for determining the distance from a client to a server in the network, for determining a service provider domain, for determining network congestion level, for determining bottleneck throughput, for determining bottleneck location, for determining page retrieval time and for automatically restarting a page under predetermined conditions.

Abstract: The interprocess communication protocol system provides a generic communication system for communication between specified processes in a complex digital system. In accordance with the interprocess communication protocol, a group of pre-defined communication signals are defined, to which all communications between the processes conform. Interface hardware is disclosed to provide communication between processes. In addition, the communication protocol can be designed into the process as and integral portion of the processes.

Abstract: In an electronic mail system environment, a system and method for automatically checking recipients' names, providing message flags, providing custom forms, and providing an autoresponse feature. Recipients' names are resolved in the background, while the user of the e-mail system is composing the message. The user easily resolves ambiguous names by using a context menu. The resolved ambiguous names are automatically used to create nicknames, which are used to resolve ambiguous names in the future. Message flags allow a sender or recipient to identify required follow-up action and a deadline. The recipient may use the message flags to quickly determine which messages require follow-up action. The e-mail system notifies a recipient when a due date is approaching or when a follow-up action is past due. A custom forms feature allows a user to create and share custom forms without requiring the form to be published or installed by other user.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a method and apparatus to permit a computer to boot from power up from its own memory units or from a network. The booting process is divided into the five stages of start-up, discovery, software download, software initialization and datafill. A boot ROM directs the stages in the booting process and the policy governing each of these five stages is laid out in a policy file. Each of the stages may be driven by the computer node's local memory unit, such as a local hard disk or non-volatile RAM), or from a software system downloader and configuration manager situated elsewhere in an ATM network where the computer node resides. A failure recovery procedure is also provided to allow the computer to revert to other means in case of failure during the booting process. The invention also provides a machine readable medium comprising a program element to implement the novel boot-up procedure.

Abstract: A method and system for discovering the location of a storage router, and therefore the attached storage devices, in a fibre channel network using the storage router's fully qualified domain name to ultimately determine the storage router's arbitrated loop physical address (AL_PA). An Internet protocol domain name query containing the fully qualified domain name is sent from a host computer over the storage area network to a domain name server to determine an Internet Protocol address for the storage router. The domain name server replies with the storage router Internet Protocol address. The host computer then sends an address resolution protocol request containing the Internet protocol address over the storage area network to determine a node name for the storage router. The storage router replies with its node name.

Abstract: An electronic conference aiding system having a structure in which one common information processing apparatus having a common display unit having a size sufficiently large for attendants to commonly watch display and a plurality of personal information processing apparatuses each having a personal display unit for exclusively creating and displaying information at a position adjacent to each attendant are connected into a network through data communication passage, wherein a comment, a reference material or the like is, as an object, related to a file displayed on the common display unit or the personal display unit in such a manner that the object is displayed at an unspecific position on the file to indicate the relation as a previous step in place of immediately embedding the object at a specific position of the file. The necessity of considering the position on the displayed file can be eliminated and the object is related to the overall portion of the file when the object is displayed.

Abstract: A system for enabling access to non-HTML objects from a web browser. The system includes a database for storing non-HTML objects. A system user requests a non-HTML object from a database using a web browser. The web browser transmits the request to a server via a HTTP server and module. The server locates and retrieves the document requested. The module translates the document to a format supported by the web browser. The HTTP server communicates the translated object to the web browser over a network. The web browser then presents the translated object to the system user. The system also enables a server to respond to a URL requests containing action commands from a browser. Action commands and additional arguments are input into the URL. The server receives the request for the URL and processes the actions and arguments identified in the URL.

Abstract: A technique, specifically apparatus and accompanying methods for use therein, that, through continual computation, harnesses available computer resources during periods of low processing activity and low network activity, such as idle time, for prefetching, e.g., web pages, or pre-selected portions thereof, into local cache of a client computer. As the browser prefetches and stores each web page (or component thereof) in its local cache, the browser provides a suitable and preferably visual indication, through its graphical user interface, to a user that this item has been fetched and stored. Consequently, the user can quickly and visually perceive that a particular item (i.e., a “fresh” page or portion) has just been prefetched and which (s)he can now quickly access from local cache.

Abstract: A computer conferencing system is provided with a transmission signal synchronization scheme. An Audio signal frame has a synchronization (sync) signal. The formatted audio including the sync signal is transmitted, together with the video signal frame and data signal frame, to the remote conferencing system via a communications network, such as a PSTN. The conferencing system is provided with a synchronization signal generator coupled to the compressed signal output of the audio board by way of a mixer. Further, the system includes a multiplexer/demultiplexer that mutiplexes/demultiplexes compressed and formatted audio/video/data generated by the audio board, video board, and host processor, respectively, with the communication board for transmission to and reception from the remote conferencing system.

Abstract: Communication stations whose own addresses coincide with a destination address of communication data received via data transmission lines and whose write enable/disable states of their own addresses stored in their address/flag memory are in their write enable states can update their own addresses to variably set address values of the communication data, then update their own address write enable/disable states to their write disable states, then execute predetermined calculations for the variably set address value in the communication data, and then transmit the communication data whose variably set address value has been rewritten into the variably set address value obtained by the calculations to succeeding stations so as to circulate between a plurality of communication stations sequentially.

Abstract: A technique, specifically a method and apparatus that implements the method, which through a probabilistic classifier (370) and, for a given recipient, detects electronic mail (e-mail) messages, in an incoming message stream, which that recipient is likely to consider "junk". Specifically, the invention discriminates message content for that recipient, through a probabilistic classifier (e.g., a support vector machine) trained on prior content classifications. Through a resulting quantitative probability measure, i.e., an output confidence level, produced by the classifier for each message and subsequently compared against a predefined threshold, that message is classified as either, e.g., spam or legitimate mail, and, e.g., then stored in a corresponding folder (223, 227) for subsequent retrieval by and display to the recipient.

Abstract: Relay station whose own address coincides with a destination address of communication data and whose own address write enable/disable state stored in the state storing means is in a write enable state can update its own address into a variably set address value in the communication data, then update the own address write enable/disable state into the write disable state, execute predetermined calculation of the variably set address value in the communication data, and transmit the communication data in which the variably set address value has been rewritten into a calculated value to a succeeding relay station so as to circulate sequentially between the plurality of relay stations.

Abstract: Improved techniques for customizing information provided from a content server through a network to a user of a computer system in accordance with demographic classifications, user interests, or preferences are disclosed. Such customizing can involve banner advertising on the Internet whereby the advertising banners are able to be targeted to the user. The customizing can also involve altering portions of a web page to be displayed to the user so that the web page is more effective, useful or desirable for the user. Besides customization of the information to be displayed to the user, the invention also provides techniques for obtaining demographic information about the user of the computer system, and techniques for transmitting the demographic information over the network so that remote content servers that provide information content to the user can do so with knowledge of the demographic information about the user.