Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Andrew Thomas Baron

Amer A Hassan

Deyun Wu

Billy R Anders, Jr

Christian F Huitema

Thomas W Kuehnel

Shai Guday

David T Jones

Dmitry A Anipko

Vishesh Parikh

Upshur Parks

Marco Piumatti

Pehkeong Teh

Yi Lu

Hui Shen

Taroon Mandhana

Gianluigi Nusca

Wajih Yahyaoui

Mahmood H Khadeer

Amir Zohrenejad

Aaron Wesley Cunningham

Deon Brewis

Saurabh Mahajan

Eliot John Flannery

Bill Begorre

Prashant Malik

Arun K Buduri

Noel Wayne Anderson

Anoop Gupta

Arun Ayyagari

Timothy Mark Moore

Abhishek Abhishek

Warren Vincent Barkley

Mitesh K Desai

Yue Chen

John W Archer

Sundar P Subramani

Vishal Mhatre

Vinod K Swamy

Chih-Chung Chang

Matthew T Durak

Andrew Gordon Cunningham

Karthik Ranganathan

Vineet Venugopal

Vishesh M Parikh

Andrew Cunningham

Matthew Durak

Billy R Anders

David Jones

Discovery of services between devices is provided prior to establishing a connection between devices, including wireless-enabled devices or devices that are communicatively coupled to wireless access points or other wireless communication devices. Discovering services prior to establishing a connection may facilitate finding a desired service. The services that may be discovered may be, for example, print services, camera services, PDA services or any other suitable services. Services may be discovered using 802.11, Bluetooth, UWB or any other suitable wireless technology. A graphical user interface is provided that enables a user to select a desired service.

Notification framework for wireless networks

An indicator for a device may provide an indication that a threshold associated with a budget for a network resource has or will be reached. When a user requests a network operation that will consume the network resource, an amount of the network resource to be consumed by the operation is predicted, if possible. If the prior use of the network resource and the amount to be used to complete the network operation exceeds a threshold the user may be warned and given an opportunity to cancel the operation or adjust the way in which the operation will be performed. If the amount of network resource a network operation will consume is unknown, a rate of use of the network resource is determined and a time until the budget is reached is estimated.

Network resource management with prediction

The disclosure generally relates to identifying a Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) enabled Wi-Fi network receiver and automatically connecting to the BTLE-enabled network receiver via a Wi-Fi signal without using a Wi-Fi scanning operation. In some aspects, an initial connection may be established between the network receiver and a BTLE-enabled device during which the Wi-Fi scanning operation of the device is disabled. Thereafter, the device may automatically detect the BTLE-enabled network receiver via BTLE signal and automatically connect to the network receiving using a Wi-Fi signal without using the Wi-Fi scanning operation. In this way, the battery life of the device may be conserved by disabling the Wi-Fi scanning operation. Although the electronic device may be within the Wi-Fi range of the network receiver, the device may not search for or connect to the network receiver if it is outside of the BTLE range of the network receiver.

Method for connecting a network receiver with one or more devices while minimizing power usage

In embodiments of wireless radios managed based on proximity, a mobile device, such as a mobile phone, tablet computer, or other portable device can be implemented for multiple, different wireless communications. A mobile device can include a first radio system for a first wireless communications technology, and a second radio system for a second wireless communications technology. A connection manager determines, based on the first wireless communications technology, whether the mobile device is in an area that is proximate an endpoint implemented for the second wireless communications technology. The connection manager can turn-on the second radio system to enable wireless communication with the endpoint when the mobile device is in the area proximate the endpoint. Alternatively, the connection manager can turn-off the second radio system and conserve power that would otherwise be utilized to scan for the endpoint when the mobile device is not in the area proximate the endpoint.

Wireless radios managed based on proximity

Security techniques and security mechanisms for wireless networks that transmit content such as advertisements. According to exemplary techniques, control messages comprising unrequested content (e.g., advertisement data) may be transmitted in response to a request from a client device, while in other exemplary techniques the control messages may be transmitted without any request from a client device. In some exemplary implementations, security mechanisms such as public key cryptography algorithms may be used to secure transmissions. In some of these techniques which implement public key cryptography, a user may be required to retrieve a public key from a source other than the wireless access point transmitting encrypted advertisements (e.g., a sign or terminal in a commercial entity transmitting such advertisements, or from a web service), such that the user may confirm that the encrypted content is from a source matching the retrieved public key and thus confirm the authenticity of a wireless access point.

Authentication mechanisms for wireless networks

This document describes management capabilities for a wireless docking experience. A wireless dock is configured to connect to multiple peripheral devices, such as a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse. Mobile devices can connect to the wireless dock, via a short-range wireless connection, to utilize the multiple peripheral devices. When deployed with other wireless docks, the wireless dock can be configured to provide management information with a broadcast signal that is usable by the mobile devices to manage the wireless connection to, and experience with, the wireless dock. The management information can include one or more of a do-not-automatically-connect indicator, an in-use indicator, an Internet-available indicator, or a group identifier.

Management capabilities for a wireless docking experience

A method and apparatus for managing network profiles and/or access to a network. Network profiles stored in a computer may be deleted and/or a connection to a wireless network may be disabled when a corresponding access period for the network has been exhausted. The access period may define an amount of time, a number of connections, a number of bits or packets of information, or other measure of connectivity to a network and/or maintenance of profile information related to the network that may be limited in some fashion.

Network access and profile control

A bootstrapping technique for wirelessly obtaining white space data that may be used to identify an available white space channel for connecting to a service. Portable wireless devices may collaborate to provide white space data to a device requesting such data. A requesting device transmits a request for the white space data using, for example, an unlicensed band. A device receiving the request may transmit a copy of the data to the requesting device. The transmitted copy may be obtained by the receiving device from a local data store or may be provided from a database server to which the receiving device is connected. In the later case the receiving device acts as a proxy between the database server and the requesting device. Once the white space data is received by the requesting device it may be used to select a channel for communication in the white space.

Distributed database access for spectrum access

Guest user are enabled to access network resources through an enterprise network using a guest user account. A guest user account may be created for a guest for a limited time. Guest account credentials of the guest account may be provided to the guest to use the guest account using any of a variety of techniques described herein, for example, by scanning a guest access card, credit card or mobile telephone of guest user, and providing the guest account credentials to the user based on the information obtained. A guest access management server may be configured to generate and maintain guest accounts, authenticate guest users, and track and log guest activity. A VLAN technology may be used to separate guest traffic from host enterprise traffic on the host enterprise network. After a guest user is authenticated, communications to and from the guest user may be routed to a guest VLAN.

Providing guest users network access based on information read from a credit card or other object

Capability checking to examine a computing device's capabilities to determine if the device supports a software defined radio to communicate according to a specific wireless protocol. Applicants have appreciated that as the reliance on software defined radio increases, numerous potential options may be available to a user for performing wireless communication. Applicants have appreciated the desirability of providing the ability to discover the capabilities of a user's computer to determine whether it is capable of supporting one or more wireless protocols.

System capability discovery for software defined radio

Methods and systems which identify and interact with network interfaces based on the network to which they provide access. A computing device operating in accordance with one or more of the principles described herein may examine available network interfaces and identify the network to which the network interfaces provide access, and perform networking tasks on interfaces based on the network identified. For example, a user may instruct a computing device to connect to a specified network, and the computing device will select a particular network interface by which to connect from the one or more available network interfaces that are able to connect to that network. Alternatively, a user may manage policies (e.g., security, connection, and application policies) based on the network to which a network interface provides access and thereby manage a network regardless of which of multiple network interfaces is used to access the network.

Performing networking tasks based on destination networks

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Andrew Thomas Baron