Patent Application
20240195884
This disclosure relates to providing bulletin services and notifications to subscribers of an internet service provider (ISP).
In the Assignee's earlier patent applications, U.S. Ser. No. 10/023,674 and U.S. Ser. No. 10/623,893, the entire contents of which are explicitly incorporated herein by reference, the present Assignee described networks in which communications such as bulletin services could be provided from an ISP to a subscriber of the ISP. In the referenced applications, a redirection device was placed in the path of upstream traffic from the subscriber. The redirection device, operating with a consolidating and management device, processed upstream data packets. If the upstream data packet contained a URL page request from a subscriber for whom a bulletin service was pending, the URL page request was redirected to the bulletin server. The bulletin server incorporated the bulletin notification into the URL page requested by the subscriber.
In particular examples provided in the applications referenced above, subscribers of an ISP attempting access to an internet service were provided with notification of potential internet service issues. A further application of providing communications to subscribers includes notifying subscribers of potential virus infections and e-mail spamming such as disclosed in the Assignee's co-pending patent application, U.S. Ser. No. 12/004,634, the entire contents of which are explicitly incorporated herein by reference. A further application of providing communications to subscribers includes notifying subscribers of potential theft of internet service on an unsecured subscriber account, as described in the Assignee's co-pending patent application U.S. Ser. No. 12/004,635, the entire contents of which are explicitly incorporated herein by reference.
More recently, such as in the Assignee's co-pending patent application U.S. Ser. No. 12/340,863 the Assignee has suggested a modification to the redirection process in which the upstream data packets are mirrored or tapped to the redirection device so that the redirection device does not interfere with the upstream traffic and receives only a copy of relevant upstream packets, such as the URL page requests.
While the mirror redirection process provides a more efficient ISP service, problems can occur. Because the router mirrors or otherwise taps the upstream packet stream without affecting the upstream packets, a URL “GET” request will arrive at the intended destination server as well as causing a redirection to the alternative bulletin services server. There is therefore a possibility that a response from the real destination server will intermingle with the redirection response creating a conflict.
What is a required is a system and method that prevents conflicts between responses from alternative web servers.
In one aspect of the disclosure, there is provided a method for providing a notification service to a subscriber of an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The method comprises monitoring upstream traffic through the ISP from the subscriber and detecting a URL page request from the subscriber to a destination server. A redirection to the notification service is generated in response to detection of the URL page request and provided to the subscriber. The redirection comprises a single packet closing an active session between the subscriber and the destination server.
In one aspect of the disclosure, there is provided a method of redirecting a web page request from a subscriber comprising generating a single TCP packet comprising redirection data and a set FIN bit and providing the TCP packet to the subscriber.
In one aspect of the disclosure, there is provided an Internet Service Provider comprising a router and a redirection device. The router copies selected packets from a subscriber to the redirection device. The redirection device determines from copied packets whether a redirection is required, generates a redirection packet comprising redirection data and a set FIN bit, and provides the redirection packet to the subscriber.
The invention will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to specific embodiments and to the accompanying drawings in which:
The present embodiments utilize many of the features and functionalities of the networks described in the Assignee's earlier patent applications referenced above, to which additional reference may be made. In
The ISP 12 includes a router or switch 22, a redirection device 21, a consolidating and management device 26 and an address provisioning database 23. The address provisioning database 23 stores associations between subscribers of the ISP and IP addresses allocated to the subscribers. The consolidating and management device 26 provides a query engine for accessing data from the database 23 in response to requests from the redirection device 21. The consolidating and management device 26 is operatively associated with the redirection device 21 to form a packet processing system, as will be described in greater detail below.
The router 22 provides a “mirror port” or “tap” on the upstream path 15 that detects selected upstream packets 27 and copies the selected packets to the redirection device 21 for further processing in addition to allowing the upstream packets 27 to pass to their intended destination. Downstream traffic from the internet 16, indicated by path 28 is routed by the router 22 to the intended subscriber 14.
In the above referenced applications, certain upstream packets trigger redirections to alternative servers other than the intended destination server for providing a notification service. A method for providing a notification service in accordance with an embodiment of the disclosure is depicted in the flowchart 100 of
In one embodiment, the router 22 may detect upstream packets 27 that contain a web “GET” request to fetch a web page from a destination server 31. The router 22 copies, i.e. mirrors, these packets to the redirection device 21. The redirection device 21 processes the packet to determine a subscriber identity and then executes a query on the database 23 using the consolidation and management device 26 to determine whether a bulletin service is pending for the subscriber. If no bulletin service is pending, then the redirection device 21 performs no function and the subscriber fetches the intended web page from the destination server 31 in accordance with the GET request. If a bulletin service is pending, the redirection device injects a redirection response 40 into the downstream path 28 to the subscriber. The redirection response 40 redirects the subscriber to an alternative bulletin server 32 that is identified in the redirection packet. As described in the above referenced patent applications, the bulletin server 32 combines a bulletin service frame having a notification message together with the content of the web page originally requested by the subscriber. Other forms of providing the bulletin service have also been described, including pop-up windows and the like.
The term redirection device is used herein in order to provide consistency with the Applicant's earlier patent applications referenced above. The person skilled in the art will understand from the foregoing description that in the context of the present disclosure, the redirection device may not perform a strict redirection function in all embodiments. The term redirection may encompass many forms of redirection, including, but not limited to a redirection to an alternative server, a redirection away from the intended destination server, a straight HTTP redirect or a replacement page containing multiple HTTP, HTML, and/or scripting constructs (e.g., “<script src=...>”) that essentially redirect the resulting visual rendering on the subscribers display.
In addition, a redirect may not be total, in that a GET request may cause a redirection as well as being transmitted through to the intended destination server. In addition, a redirection away from a destination server may still cause the intended page content to be retrieved from the destination server via a replacement page containing multiple “gets”.
Because the router 22 mirrors the GET request to the redirection device 21, the original GET request may continue to the destination server 31 triggering a response from the destination server 31 to the subscriber 14. The destination server response may conflict with the redirection response 40. Therefore, in an embodiment of the disclosure depicted in the flowchart 200 of
The redirection response 40 is depicted in
While the ISP 12 is conceptually shown in
The process of generating and sending the single TCP packet response may be embodied in software and/or in hardware. For example, computer executable instructions may be stored on a computer readable medium that, when executed, cause the processor to perform one or more of the steps illustrated in the flowcharts of
Though a single database 23 is illustrated and described herein for clarity, the person skilled in the art will readily understand that the database 23 can be divided into a higher number of databases or may be consolidated with other databases. For example, the databases 23 may be consolidated with a database for storing an association between users and a subscriber account, as described in the Assignee's U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/004,635,filed Dec. 24, 2007, titled “SYSTEM, METHOD AND COMPUTER READABLE MEDIUM FOR DETERMINING USERS OF AN INTERNET SERVICE”, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,856,314,issued on Oct. 7, 2014, the entire contents of which are herein incorporated by reference. Alternatively or in addition, the database 23 may be consolidated with a database for storing an association between a subscriber and a shared secret as described in the Assignee's U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/004,645, filed Dec. 24, 2007, titled “SYSTEM, METHOD AND COMPUTER READABLE MEDIUM FOR MESSAGE AUTHENTICATION TO SUBSCRIBERS OF AN INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER”, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,161,284, issued on Apr. 17, 2012, the entire contents of which are herein incorporated by reference.
Although embodiments of the present invention have been illustrated in the accompanying drawings and described in the foregoing description, it will be understood that the invention is not limited to the embodiments disclosed, but is capable of numerous rearrangements, modifications, and substitutions without departing from the spirit of the invention as set forth and defined by the following claims. For example, the capabilities of the invention can be performed fully and/or partially by one or more of the blocks, modules, processors or memories. Also, these capabilities may be performed in the current manner or in a distributed manner and on, or via, any device able to provide and/or receive information. Further, although depicted in a particular manner, various modules or blocks may be repositioned without departing from the scope of the current invention. Still further, although depicted in a particular manner, a greater or lesser number of modules and connections can be utilized with the present invention in order to accomplish the present invention, to provide additional known features to the present invention, and/or to make the present invention more efficient. Also, the information sent between various modules can be sent between the modules via at least one of a data network, the Internet, an Internet Protocol network, a wireless source, and a wired source and via plurality of protocols.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 17879739 | Aug 2022 | US |
| Child | 18444708 | US | |
| Parent | 16842569 | Apr 2020 | US |
| Child | 17879739 | US | |
| Parent | 15943169 | Apr 2018 | US |
| Child | 16842569 | US | |
| Parent | 13211406 | Aug 2011 | US |
| Child | 15943169 | US |
