Message link server with plural message delivery triggers
Patent No. US9615192 (titled "Message link server with plural message delivery triggers") on Jul 15, 2016. The application was issued on Apr 4, 2017.
What is this patent about?
’192 is related to the field of wireless network management and secure control plane communications. Specifically, it addresses the challenge of efficiently delivering administrative and policy-related messages from various network infrastructure elements to specific software agents residing on mobile devices without overwhelming the network with constant signaling traffic or draining device battery life.
The underlying idea behind ’192 is the implementation of a message buffering system that decouples the receipt of a message from its immediate delivery. By acting as an intelligent intermediary, a server can aggregate non-critical control messages and wait for specific triggers—such as a time-critical event or a scheduled heartbeat—before flushing the buffer. This reduces 'network chatter' by batching multiple updates into a single secure transmission window.
The claims of ’192 focus on a message link server that maintains secure message links with device link agents across a fleet of wireless devices. The server receives messages from multiple network elements, each targeted at specific authorized software components on a device. A logic engine determines when to deliver this buffered content based on a set of triggers, ensuring that at least one trigger is an asynchronous event with time-critical needs, rather than simply delivering every message as soon as it arrives.
In practice, the system allows network elements like billing servers, policy managers, and security monitors to send updates to a device without forcing an immediate radio wake-up cycle for every individual packet. The server identifies the target software component on the device, stores the data, and waits for an efficient delivery window. This window might be opened by a periodic timer, a threshold of data usage, or a high-priority alert that requires immediate attention, at which point all pending low-priority messages are bundled and sent.
This approach differs from prior solutions that either relied on immediate push notifications for every control message or simple periodic polling. By utilizing a trigger-based delivery mechanism that accounts for the urgency of the message and the state of the device, the invention optimizes the balance between real-time control and network efficiency. It effectively creates a secure, managed 'trickle' of control plane traffic that can scale to support complex service policies across millions of devices.
How does this patent fit in bigger picture?
Technical Landscape
In the late 2000s when ’192 was filed, mass market digital content distribution was increasingly straining wireless and wireline access networks at a time when capacity was typically implemented using centralized core network architectures. During this era, systems commonly relied on deep packet inspection and traffic shaping within the core infrastructure rather than distributed intelligence, which made the implementation of highly granular, device-specific billing and service policies non-trivial. Furthermore, hardware and software constraints of the period meant that managing diverse service plans for a growing variety of specialized networked devices often required expensive, proprietary custom interface development for each new application or commerce platform.
Prosecution Position
The disclosed invention represents a meaningful technical advancement by shifting service policy implementation and billing event capture from the core network to a distributed architecture involving a device-based service processor. This architectural shift addresses the technical problem of network capacity constraints and the high cost of centralized traffic inspection by enabling verifiable, granular monitoring of service activities directly on the end-user device. By integrating a secure control plane between the device and a network-based service controller, the system enables the capability to implement complex service policies—such as ambient services, bill-by-account, and differentiated QoS—without requiring extensive modifications to the core routing infrastructure. This integration overcomes the technical constraint of limited network-side visibility into encrypted or application-specific traffic, resulting in a more scalable and flexible management framework for diverse device ecosystems.
Claims
The patent contains a total of 15 claims, with claims 1 and 15 serving as the independent claims. These independent claims focus on a message link server and a corresponding method for managing secure communication links between network elements and multiple software components on wireless end-user devices, specifically utilizing a buffering system and logic to release time-critical data based on specific asynchronous message delivery triggers. The dependent claims serve to further define the system by specifying encryption methods, secure execution environments, upload message handling, and various trigger conditions such as periodic timers, heartbeat messages, and network data usage thresholds.
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US9615192
- Application Number
- US15211430A
- Filing Date
- Jul 15, 2016
- Publication Date
- Apr 4, 2017
- External Links
- Slate, USPTO , Google Patents