Patent Application
20120059932
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to home networking. More specifically, the present invention relates to the application of home network technologies to a wide area network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Home networking has advanced from the early days of merely linking computers and printers to the modern home network, which can include mobile devices, televisions, set-top boxes, refrigerators, etc.
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a distributed, open networking architecture that allows devices to connect seamlessly and to simplify the implementation of networks in the home (data sharing, communications, and entertainment) and corporate environments. UPnP achieves this by defining and publishing UPnP device control protocols built upon open, Internet-based communication standards.
UPnP has grown in popularity of late in part due to the rise in popularity of media servers. Media servers are small computers that store multiple types of content (e.g., photos, music, videos, etc.). The content may then be streamed from a media server to one or more control points (e.g., iPod, television set, etc.).
UPnP principally applies to local area networks (LANs), specifically home area networks. UPnP allows devices on the LAN to discover other devices, read their description, give commands, and send events. UPnP is currently only applied to LAN environments because UPnP discovery is performed using Internet Protocol (IP) multicasting. This discovery mechanism, while suitable for home use, is not scalable to public networking systems.
Discovery servers on a local network that listen to discovery traffic have been proposed as a way to scale discovery to larger networks. In this solution, the directory servers intercept and collect the local multicast traffic and then unicast the information about devices on the home network to centralized servers that are administered to select which devices are visible where. Doing so causes the discovery packets to be limited to the LAN networks and only unicast packets flow on the Wide Area Network (WAN) or other LANs, thereby controlling traffic. This solution, however, requires the presence of such directory servers, and is thus not typically transparent to the user of the home network.
As such, a solution is needed that operates differently than prior art solutions.
In a first embodiment of the present invention, a method for allowing a device on a home network to access a service outside the home network is provided, the method comprising: receiving, at a server outside the home network, a registration message from the service; storing details about the service in a storage accessible by the server, wherein the details include an address for the service; receiving, at the server, a request to locate a service, wherein the request is received from the home network; locating details about a matching service stored in the storage, wherein the matching service meets criteria specified in the request from the home network; and providing the details about the matching service to the home network, enabling the device to directly contact the matching service using the address specified in the details about the matching service.
In a second embodiment of the present invention, a method for accessing a service outside a home network from a device within the home network is provided, the method comprising: sending a unicast request, from the device to a well-known cloud service, to find a service; receiving, from the well-known cloud service, an identification of a service and an address for the service, wherein the well-known cloud service sends the identification of the service and the address for the service based upon information stored from registrations of various services with the well-known cloud service; and contacting the address for the service to access the service.
In a third embodiment of the present invention, a cloud service is provided comprising: an interface to a home network; an interface to Internet services; a storage; a processor configured to: receive a registration message from one of the Internet services via the interface to Internet services; store details about the one of the Internet services in the storage, wherein the details include an address for the service; receive a request to locate a service, wherein the request is received from the home network via the interface to the home network; locate details about a matching service stored in the storage, wherein the matching service meets criteria specified in the request from the home network; and provide the details about the matching service to the home network via the interface to the home network, enabling a device in the home network to directly contact the matching service using the address specified in the details about the matching service.
In a fourth embodiment of the present invention, a system is provided comprising: a home network including a device; a well-known cloud service located outside the home network; and a service located outside the home network; wherein the service is configured to register details about itself with the well-known cloud service via a UPnP advertisement message having extra headers describing the details about the service; wherein the service is configured to: store the details about the service in a storage; receive a request to locate a service from the home network; locate details about a matching service stored in the storage; and send the details about the matching service to the home network.
In a fifth embodiment of the present invention, an apparatus for allowing a device on a home network to access a service outside the home network is provided, the apparatus comprising: means for receiving, at a server outside the home network, a registration message from the service; means for storing details about the service in a storage accessible by the server, wherein the details include an address for the service; means for receiving, at the server, a request to locate a service, wherein the request is received from the home network; means for locating details about a matching service stored in the storage, wherein the matching service meets criteria specified in the request from the home network; and means for providing the details about the matching service to the home network, enabling the device to directly contact the matching service using the address specified in the details about the matching service.
In a sixth embodiment of the present invention, a non-transitory program storage device readable by a machine tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform a method for allowing a device on a home network to access a service outside the home network is provided, the method comprising: receiving, at a server outside the home network, a registration message from the service; storing details about the service in a storage accessible by the server, wherein the details include an address for the service; receiving, at the server, a request to locate a service, wherein the request is received from the home network; locating details about a matching service stored in the storage, wherein the matching service meets criteria specified in the request from the home network; and providing the details about the matching service to the home network, enabling the device to directly contact the matching service using the address specified in the details about the matching service.
Reference will now be made in detail to specific embodiments of the invention including the best modes contemplated by the inventors for carrying out the invention. Examples of these specific embodiments are illustrated in the accompanying drawings. While the invention is described in conjunction with these specific embodiments, it will be understood that it is not intended to limit the invention to the described embodiments. On the contrary, it is intended to cover alternatives, modifications, and equivalents as may be included within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims. In the following description, specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. The present invention may be practiced without some or all of these specific details. In addition, well known features may not have been described in detail to avoid unnecessarily obscuring the invention.
In accordance with the present invention, the components, process steps, and/or data structures may be implemented using various types of operating systems, programming languages, computing platforms, computer programs, and/or general purpose machines. In addition, those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that devices of a less general purpose nature, such as hardwired devices, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), or the like, may also be used without departing from the scope and spirit of the inventive concepts disclosed herein. The present invention may also be tangibly embodied as a set of computer instructions stored on a computer readable medium, such as a memory device.
It should be noted that the term “home networking” as used throughout this document refers to a type of network that is commonly used in homes to connect media devices. There is no requirement, however, that this type of networking actually be used in homes, as it has equal applicability for use in businesses or other entities. As such, the term “home networking” shall not be construed as limiting any embodiments of the present invention to use in a home, and shall be interpreted as any type of local area network (LAN).
It should also be noted that the term “unicast” as used throughout this document refers to any communication sent to a single destination.
The present invention involves a solution that allows UPnP to be used in WAN environments by approaching the problem from a different perspective and with a different goal than prior art solutions. Rather than limiting the traffic in the LAN environment, an embodiment of the present invention changes the UPnP protocol to remove the need for LAN discovery traffic altogether. Of course, a device may still perform LAN-side discovery should it so desire, but it is no longer required, allowing WAN discovery to be achieved in a much improved manner. In an embodiment of the present invention, the device can also be connected to a cloud service to perform a scalable query on a centralized directory. This directory can contain the addresses of the description documents from Internet servers running a UPnP service. Those UPnP Internet servers are similarly modified to run UPnP services but do not send out discovery advertisements because they are configured to only serve WAN clients.
With this structure in place, UPnP devices are able to use the same protocols to perform services with WAN-based servers by only making small changes to the discovery advertisement and search processes in the existing UPnP architecture.
In an embodiment of the present invention, devices or machines wanting to advertise a UPnP service do so by sending a UPnP advertisement message (such as a NOTIFY message) to a well-known cloud service on the Internet. This request may have headers added to it to describe the device type, manufacturer, location (e.g., via Global Position Service, service provider, or other information that allows the system to determine the type(s) of device it wishes to service). In that sense, the information may be information pertaining to the type of device the service wishes to service, or may be information pertaining to the service itself. The cloud service may be located on an Internet server. The Internet server then keeps this information and then awaits updated NOTIFY messages from the service periodically (e.g., daily) to allow it to keep a fresh state of servers and services.
UPnP devices then can contact the well-known cloud service via the Internet to locate services it can subscribe to. The UPnP device may send a service request to the cloud service including headers added to it to describe the device type, manufacturer, location, service provider, or other information to determine the type of device or service it wishes to search for. The server then can search its database of registered services and return the result to the device. Once discovery is complete, the client can interact with the service just as it would had it discovered it locally.
When a user wishes to use a UPnP service, the user's device 104 contacts the well-known cloud service 102 using a service request. This request can use an existing Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP) MSearch request, but sends it unicast to the well-known cloud service and additional headers are added to it to describe the device type, manufacturer, location, service provider, etc. The well-known cloud service 102 searches its database of registered services (from the advertisement messages), perhaps filtered using the information regarding the types of devices the services wish to service and the actual type of device from which the service request was sent, and then returns a set of possible services. This set may be returned in an MSearch unicast reply, using the existing UPnP format, so it looks to the client as if it came from a local service in response to a traditional multicast service request. In reality, it was received over a unicast connection in reply to the specialized MSearch request to the well-known cloud service 102.
The client device 104 then uses this reply as it would normally. It contains a URL in order to fetch the device description of the device running the service, so it can either fetch this or begin communication with the services associated with that device through an API.
In some embodiments of the present invention, client devices may subscribe to events on the server. However, this only makes sense for certain services. For example, an Internet server acting as a content directory service may not allow clients to subscribe to content change requests. This is the same as a local device that chooses not to reply to those subscription requests.
In some other embodiments of the present invention, client devices may themselves register with the well-known cloud service, allowing services to issue general requests for devices and having the well-known cloud service return a list of potentially matching devices.
With all embodiments, there may be security concerns that can be alleviated using various authentication or other security techniques. In one example embodiment, the well-known cloud service simply keeps all device information private, not sharing it with services. In such an embodiment, it is even possible that the server never be made aware of the matching devices. The services will simply be contacted directly from whatever devices choose to do so. In another embodiment of the present invention, client authentication is performed prior to the device contacting the well-known cloud server. In such embodiments, the well-known cloud server may pass along authentication credentials for the device to the appropriate service(s), essentially pre-authenticating the user with the services. This may be helpful in reducing the number of steps that needs to be undertaken on the part of the device to establish the connection to the service.
In one example embodiment of the present invention, a webcam is used as the UPnP service.
A user can discover and access the UPnP webcam 200 from outside the home network with a device, such as mobile phone 204 having a software application that communicates with the UPnP Webcam 200 in the home. The mobile device 204 first communicates with the WDS server 202 to search for and obtain details about services available, including service addresses. Then the mobile device 204 can directly communicate with an appropriate service using the service's address. There may be various ways in which this communication occurs. In one example, the UPnP Remote access protocol is used to establish the connection between the WAN device and the LAN device.
A user can discover and access any of the UPnP devices 302a, 302b, 302c in the home network with a device, such as mobile phone 306 having a software application that communicates with the appropriate UPnP device 302a, 302b, 302c in the home. The mobile phone 306 first communicates with the WDS server 202 to search for and obtain details about devices available, including device addresses. Then the mobile phone 306 can directly communicate with an appropriate device using the device's address. There may be various ways in which this communication occurs. In one example, the UPnP Remote access protocol is used to establish the connection between the WAN device and the LAN device.
At 906, the server may locate details about a matching service stored in the storage. This matching may be accomplished by examining criteria specified in the request and comparing it to details found in the storage. For example, the details found in the storage may indicate a type of device that is compatible with a particular service and the criteria specified in the request could include details about the device, allowing the server to determine if a match is possible. It should be noted, however, that the request to locate a service may have criteria regarding the type of service to find, and the matching may include attempting to fulfill these types of criteria as well. For example, the request to locate a service may come from a digital camera and specify that it is looking for a service that operates on an image format utilized by the digital camera. The server is then able to locate a service or services that operate on that image format.
At 908, details about the matching service are provided to the home network, enabling the device to directly contact the matching service using the address specified in the details about the matching service. This may be accomplished by, for example, sending an msearch unicast reply. The advantage of an MSearch unicast reply is that it uses UPnP protocols, and therefore looks to the home network as if it came from a local device in response to a multicast msearch request even though it in reality came from outside the home network in response to a unicast msearch request.
As will be appreciated to one of ordinary skill in the art, the aforementioned example architectures can be implemented in many ways, such as program instructions for execution by a processor, as software modules, microcode, as computer program product on computer readable media, as logic circuits, as application specific integrated circuits, as firmware, as consumer electronic device, etc. and may utilize wireless devices, wireless transmitters/receivers, and other portions of wireless networks. Furthermore, embodiment of the disclosed method and system for displaying multimedia content on multiple electronic display screens can take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment, or an embodiment containing both software and hardware elements.
The term “computer readable medium” is used generally to refer to media such as main memory, secondary memory, removable storage, hard disks, flash memory, disk drive memory, CD-ROM and other forms of persistent memory. It should be noted that program storage devices, as may be used to describe storage devices containing executable computer code for operating various methods of the present invention, shall not be construed to cover transitory subject matter, such as carrier waves or signals. Program storage devices and computer readable medium are terms used generally to refer to media such as main memory, secondary memory, removable storage disks, hard disk drives, and other tangible storage devices or components.
Although only a few embodiments of the invention have been described in detail, it should be appreciated that the invention may be implemented in many other forms without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention. Therefore, the present embodiments should be considered illustrative and not restrictive and the invention is not to be limited to the details given herein, but may be modified within the scope and equivalents of the appended claims.
This application claims the benefit of priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/379,677, filed Sep. 2, 2010, which is incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61379677 | Sep 2010 | US |
