Patents by Inventor Thomas Alan Millard

Thomas Alan Millard has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Mechanism for tracking traffic statistics on a per packet basis to enable variable price billing
    Patent number: 8301521
    Abstract: A method, system and computer program product for generating variable price billing whereby a customer may balance its data traffic in response to such billing. A subsystem in an edge gateway may extract the packet header from a copy of a received packet of data associated with a session between a customer and a server and generate a key based on the extracted packet header. The key may be used to index into a table that may store pointers to particular statistics records associated with particular sessions. Once the subsystem identifies the statistics record associated with the current session, the subsystem may execute a per packet statistics update for the statistics record associated with the session. A per packet statistics update may include one or more of the following: time stamping arrival of the packet, updating packet count, updating byte count, determining transfer rate, determining distance packet traveled.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 12, 2002
    Date of Patent: October 30, 2012
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Thomas Alan Millard, Francis Edward Noel, Jr., Rosemary Venema Slager, Norman Clark Strole
  • Mechanism for tracking traffic statistics on a per packet basis to enable variable price billing
    Publication number: 20030093341
    Abstract: A method, system and computer program product for generating variable price billing whereby a customer may balance its data traffic in response to such billing. A subsystem in an edge gateway may extract the packet header from a copy of a received packet of data associated with a session between a customer and a server and generate a key based on the extracted packet header. The key may be used to index into a table that may store pointers to particular statistics records associated with particular sessions. Once the subsystem identifies the statistics record associated with the current session, the subsystem may execute a per packet statistics update for the statistics record associated with the session. A per packet statistics update may include one or more of the following: time stamping arrival of the packet, updating packet count, updating byte count, determining transfer rate, determining distance packet traveled.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 12, 2002
    Publication date: May 15, 2003
    Applicant: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Thomas Alan Millard, Francis Edward Noel, Rosemary Venema Slager, Norman Clark Strole