The following quoted text (indented at the bullet) is taken from the statement of prior art in US Patent 5,706,434 entitled Integrated request-response system and method generating responses to request objects formatted according to various communication protocols and filed in 1995 by Electric Classifieds, Inc.
- Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Communications Model
As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art,
communication networks and their operations can be described according
to the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. This model includes
seven layers: an application, presentation, session,
transport, network, link, and physical layer. The OSI model was
developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
and is described in "The Basics Book of OSI and Network Management" by
Motorola Codex from Addison-Wesley Publishing
Company, Inc., 1993 (First Printing September 1992).
Each layer of the OSI model performs a specific data
communications task, a service to and for the layer that precedes it
(e.g., the network layer provides a service for the transport layer).
The process can be likened to placing a letter in a
series of envelopes before it's sent through the postal system. Each
succeeding envelope adds another layer of processing or overhead
information necessary to process the transaction. Together, all the
envelopes help make sure the letter gets to the
right address and that the message received is identical to the message
sent. Once the entire package is received at its destination, the
envelopes are opened one by one until the letter itself emerges exactly
as written.
In a data communication transaction, however, each end user is
unaware of the envelopes, which perform their functions transparently.
For example, an automatic bank teller transaction can be tracked
through the multilayer OSI system. One
multiple layer system (Open System A) provides an application layer
that is an interface to a person attempting a transaction, while the
other multiple layer system (Open System B) provides an application
layer that interfaces with applications software
in a bank's host computer. The corresponding layers in Open Systems A
and B are called peer layers and communicate through peer protocols.
These peer protocols provide communication support for a user's
application, performing transaction related tasks
such as debiting an account, dispensing currency, or crediting an
account.
Actual data flow between the two open systems (Open System A
and Open System B), however, is from top to bottom in one open system
(Open System A, the source), across the communications line, and then
from bottom to top in the other open system
(Open System B, the destination). Each time that user application data
passes downward from one layer to the next layer in the same system
more processing information is added. When that information is removed
and processed by the peer layer in the
other system, it causes various tasks (error correction, flow control,
etc.) to be performed.
The ISO has specifically defined all seven layers, which are
summarized below in the order in which the data actually flows as they
leave the source:
Layer 7, the application layer, provides for a user
application (such as getting money from an automatic bank teller
machine) to interface with the OSI application layer. That OSI
application layer has a corresponding peer layer in the other
open system, the bank's host computer.
Layer 6, the presentation layer, makes sure the user
information (a request for $50 in cash to be debited from your checking
account) is in a format (i.e., syntax or sequence of ones and zeros)
the destination open system can understand.
Layer 5, the session layer, provides synchronization control
of data between the open systems (i.e., makes sure the bit
configurations that pass through layer 5 at the source are the same as
those that pass through layer 5 at the destination).
Layer 4, the transport layer [also known as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) layer], ensures that an end-to-end
connection has been established between the two open systems and is
often reliable (i.g., layer 4 at the destination "confirms the request
for a connection," so to speak, that it has
received from layer 4 at the source).
Layer 3, the network layer [also known as the Internet Protocol (IP) layer], provides routing and relaying of
data through the network (among other things, at layer 3 on the
outbound side an "address" gets slapped on the "envelope" which is then
read by layer 3 at the destination).
Layer 2, the data link layer, includes flow control of data as
messages pass down through this layer in one open system and up through
the peer layer in the other open system.
Layer 1, the physical interface layer, includes the ways in
which data communications equipment is connected mechanically and
electrically, and the means by which the data moves across those
physical connections from layer 1 at the source to
layer 1 at the destination.
The particular focus of the following discussion is on media
access control (MAC) for communication networks which is performed in
the OSI network and data link layers. It will be appreciated by those
skilled in the art that various applications
and components operating in the other OSI layers may be interchangeably
used with the particular MAC described below so long as these
applications and components adhere to the OSI design structures. For
example, many different OSI physical layer
components (e.g., a parallel bus, a serial bus, or a time-slotted
channel) can be used in conjunction with the same MAC so long as each
of the OSI physical layer components passes the particular information
required by OSI design parameters to the OSI
data link layer.
Standard Data Communication Network Protocols
Standard data communication network protocols, such as that
which is described above, offer new abilities and corresponding
technological problems. Standard network protocols suites such as the
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
suite (TCP/IP) allow for the easy creation of transport-layer
protocols. These transport protocols and accompanying data languages
allow for a diverse set of client applications which communicate using
them. This ability to support a diverse client
base is a boon to the commercial and mainstream potential of data
communications networks because diversity is a necessary condition for
a product in the marketplace. Diversity, in some cases being helpful,
can also be a problem. The main problem with
the diverse client base is that not every client knows every version of
every protocol or every dialect of every data language. Thus,
coordination between a server and these clients can be a difficult
problem. Electronic mail (email) on the Internet,
for example, uses Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) and adheres to
the Request for Comments 822 (RFC822) message standard.
Common email clients for the Internet are Udora, Elm, PINE,
PRODIGY Mail, and AMERICA ONLINE Mail. The protocols and languages used
are all generally the same email clients. However, each client has
different properties and capabilities which
make the general process of creating and serving objects via email
difficult. For example, email clients differ in how wide each line of a
message may be (email messages used by the PRODIGY e-mail client are 60
characters wide, whereas those used by the
AMERICA ONLINE email client are 49). They also differ in terms of what
extensions they support--some email clients support the Multipurpose
Internet Mail Extensions (MIME), but most do not. Similarly, the World
Wide Web (WWW), an internet-distributed
hypermedia (text, image, sound, video) network, primarily uses
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
for its communication.
The WWW has the same problem as email with regard to clients.
There exist different versions of HTTP and different dialects of HTML,
and most clients do not know all of them. For example, Netscape
Communications Corporation has put forth its
own extensions to HTML for features such as background images behind
text and centered text. These features are not official industry
standards but are becoming just as good in the sense that they are de
facto standards. Another problem of the easy
creation of new transport-layer protocols is that new transport-layer
protocols and data languages (either standard or custom) continue
materializing. These protocols and languages either solve new
communications problems (such as HTTP and HTML
enhancing the Internet with hypermedia), or better solve older ones
(e.g., Sun Microsystems' new HOT JAVA extensions to HTML and the JAVA
programming language promise to be the next best feature for the WWW).
The Importance of an Integrated System
With the diversity of data communication protocols and
languages, there is a tendency for engineers to try to build a system
for each of the many protocols and languages, rather than to build a
single system to address all of them. This is
because in a certain sense it is easier to write an individual system
with a more limited domain than an integrated system with a more
expanded domain; one does not have to expend the effort necessary to
abstract out the common features across a diverse
set. However, it is very expensive to maintain many individual systems
and usually much cheaper to maintain a single integrated system. Also,
it is much more difficult to maintain feature parity and share data
between many individual systems as opposed
to within an integrated system. An additional benefit of an integrated
system would be that, because the step has already been taken to
abstract out common features of various protocols and languages, it is
much easier to adapt to newer ones, which will
most likely be abstractly similar enough to the older ones to allow for
easy integration.
Two-Way Communication and the Drive Towards Peer-To-Peer Mass Communications
New communication models emerging from usage of data
communications networks such as the Internet are causing changes in the
relationship between data producers and data consumers. It used to be
that with the one-to-many, one-way model of
television and radio, content was produced by a small elite of
entertainer-business persons and was consumed by the masses. The
two-way nature of data communications networks, however, allows for the
more intimate participation of the consumer. Even to
the point of blurring the distinction between consumer and producer:
because of the ability to participate, the old consumer can now be both
a consumer and a producer on networks such as the Internet.
Relationships on data communications networks are
much flatter and more egalitarian in the sense that each participant is
a peer (both a producer and consumer). One important outgrowth of this
elevated status of the individual on a data communications network is
that the individual now demands more
personalized attention. For example, if a peer provides another with
knowledge about him or herself (e.g., geographic location, gender, age,
interests), then he or she expects that responses should take this
knowledge into account. A peer can no longer
be treated like a demographic average as in the world of television and
radio.
The Technological Problems in Need of Solution
Given these new data communications networks and their
technological and social implications, it is evident that new systems
should provide solutions, for example, to the following problem: How
does one design an integrated system that uses
multiple protocols and data languages and serves data in a way that
takes advantage of knowledge about clients and users?
Description of the Prior Art
The ability to create and serve objects has been around ever
since the birth of the client/server model. Also, the notion of
providing services to general users through data communications
networks has been around at least since the early days
of VideoTex. However, this technology was limited and was more focused
on building specialized VideoTex terminals that fit some particular
mold required by particular servers (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No.
4,805,119) rather than being focused on
making servers be flexible in handling a variety of client types. This
is probably due to the fact that work on VideoTex was done by
individuals with the television frame of mind--content would be created
in a central way and then broadcast to the
masses. The cultural importance of peer-to-peer communications was not
fully recognized at that time.
Integrated services platforms have been developed for
telephone networks (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,193,110) but
still only focus on telephone calls (essentially a single protocol as
opposed to many). In recent years, a number of
online service providers--the Prodigy Service Company, America Online,
CompuServe, and others--have developed their own means to create and
serve objects in a similar vein. Technologically, these companies are
not all that different from the older
VideoTex companies. They require users to obtain custom software
clients which speak custom protocols in order to interact with their
servers, even if their software can be used on different personal
computers to make their services personal
computer-independent (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,347,632).
Because of these custom clients and protocols, these services are
mutually incompatible.
What is not addressed by services like these is the growing
usage of standard communication protocols and languages (like SMTP,
HTTP, and HTML) in providing services to standard clients. Ultimately,
this usage of proprietary clients and
protocols leads to self-destruction in a marketplace which demands
standardization, decentralized control, and diversity. With regard to
the personalization of service, attention has lately been paid to the
need to support customized content to clients,
such as customized television commercials (see, for example, U.S. Pat.
No. 5,319,455). But one can see limitations in the philosophy of this
work in that clients are still seen as "viewers" in a one-way
communications model, rather than as
participants in a two-way model. Also, technologies have been developed
to abstract data and present it in dynamic ways based upon user
parameters (see, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,165,030 and 4,969,093).
However, this effort has not been focused
on protocol-independence and language-independence of this abstracted
data.
[emphasis added]
I am filing this entry in the Reference Library to this blog.
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