Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Donald J Kadyk

Neil Scott Fishman

Marc E Seinfeld

Michael Todd Kramer

Kevin T Damour

Vinay Deo

Leif Pederson

Joan R Anastasio

Methods, systems, and computer program products for synchronizing data stored at one or more message clients with data stored at a message server where the message clients may receive update notifications and may represent the data using different data structures than the message server uses to represent the same data. A token is associated with each data change that occurs at the message server. The message server sends each change and associated token to the message clients. When the message clients request a synchronization, the tokens they received are returned to the message server for comparison with the tokens the message server sent to the message clients. If the message clients do not return a particular token, the message server determines that the clients did not receive the corresponding change and resends the change to the message clients. Tokens may also be used to divide a change into one or more portions, with only one portion being provided initially. Then, in response to receiving the token associated with the portion, the message server may provide the remaining portion of the message to the message clients.

Accounting for update notification in synchronizing data that may be represented by different data structures

Accounting for update notifications in synchronizing data that may be represented by different data structures

Methods, systems, computer program products and data structures are described which allow a client to communicate with a server even though multiple proxies that require different authentication data must be traversed to allow such communication. In operation, the client first authenticates to a first proxy using authentication data appropriate for the first proxy. The client then authenticates to a second proxy using different authentication data that is appropriate for the second proxy. This proxy authentication continues through as many proxies as necessary until the client is in communication with the server.

Authentication through multiple proxy servers

Methods, systems, and computer program products for negotiating a secure end-to-end connection using a proxy server as an intermediary. The client first negotiates a secure connection between the client and the proxy so that any credentials exchanged will be encrypted. After the exchange of authentication credentials, the secure client-proxy connection is altered so that no further encryption takes place. The client and server then negotiate a secure end-to-end connection through the proxy, with the secure end-to-end connection being encapsulated within the insecure client-proxy connection. In this way, the overhead of creating a separate client-proxy connection for the secure end-to-end connection may be avoided, but the insecure client-proxy connection introduces only minimal overhead because it no longer encrypts any data that it carries.

Negotiating secure connections through a proxy server

An external client securely accesses a private corporate network using a communications device, but without the communications device being required to communicate through the private corporate network when communicating with resources external to the private corporate network. The external client establishes a connection with the private corporate network over the public network such as the Internet using, for example, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). The external client then provides security to the connection by running, for example, the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol over the TCP protocol. During the ensuing session with the private corporate network, the communications device establishes a subsequent connection(s) with the external resource.

Establishing a secure connection with a private corporate network over a public network

An expert proxy server is described that is coupled to a number of wireless devices through a wireless network, and to a number of server computer systems through an external network such as, for example, the Internet. The expert proxy server acts as an agent for a wireless device by providing a service for the wireless device. Specifically, the expert proxy server determines that a service is to be provided to the wireless device. Next, the expert proxy server identifies an application that provides the service and then communicates with the identified application that provides the service. The expert proxy server compiles the results of the communication with the application and then transmits the compilation to the wireless device over the wireless network. Thus, the relatively smaller bandwidth of the wireless network is preserved by transmitting a minimal amount of information over the wireless network while leaving more extensive communications to occur over higher bandwidth external networks. Also, since the extensive processing occurs at the expert proxy server rather than at the wireless device, the application on the wireless device may be simplified and smaller as compared to the supporting applications on the expert proxy server thereby preserving the limited memory and processing capability of the wireless device.

Using an expert proxy server as an agent for wireless devices

The dynamic conversion of a data structure from an origin data format into a destination data format is described. Instead of using a single data conversion module to accomplish this data conversion, a gateway computer system identifies a sequence of format conversion modules that, when executed in sequence, converts the data structure from the origin to the destination data format. The conversion occurs dynamically during run time and reduces the amount of needed data conversion modules significantly, particularly when there is a large amount of possible origin data formats and destination data formats. This conversion is particularly useful when communicating over wireless networks since there is little standardization in wireless devices resulting in wireless devices having many different proprietary data formats.

Methods and systems for dynamic conversion of objects from one format type to another format type by selectively using an intermediary format type

Methods and systems for authentication through multiple proxy servers that require different authentication data

A flexible gateway accommodates data transfer from a data origination device over a wide variety of networks to a wide variety of destination devices, even if those networks use different protocols, and even if the devices recognize different data formats. Thus, the gateway can perform work previously requiring numerous gateways. After the gateway receives information from a data source, the gateway identifies the specific device type and the specific network type to which the information is to be routed. The gateway then calls device and network drivers associated with the specific device and network identified with the destination device. These drivers then manipulate the data using the device driver into the format recognized by the destination device, and then provide the manipulated data to the destination device over the identified network using the compatible protocol. Thus, the destination device properly receives and interprets the information provided by the data source. If, in the very next moment, data arrives at the gateway that is to be routed over a different network using a different protocol to a different device recognizing a different device, the gateway will call different device and network drivers to enable the communication.

Flexible system and method for communicating between a broad range of networks and devices

Characters that are not among those recognized for use in page messages are encoded using a subset of the recognized printable characters to enable the data comprising a page object to be transmitted over a paging channel. In one preferred form of the invention, a subset of the recognized printable characters are designated as encoding characters for use in encoding data that includes characters not among the recognized printable character set. Further, each time that one of the encoding characters occurs in the input data, the byte representing that character must also be encoded. To encode the characters, the byte is divided into nibbles. Each nibble is a hexadecimal digit that is encoded using one of the 16 encoding characters. If a byte of the input data repeats more than four times in succession, it is run length encoded (RLE) during the encoding process to compress the encoded data. Upon receipt, the encoded data are decoded using the same encoding characters, to recover the nibbles of each byte of the original input data. Furthermore, run length decoding is applied when a run length encoding signal character occurs in the encoded data stream. The run length encoding signal character is selected from the recognized printable character set. Using this technique, data can be sent that include characters not within the recognized printable character set and the encoded characters can be compressed to substantially reduce the amount of data transmitted as a paging object if the input data includes significant repeating characters.

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Bothell, WA, United States of America

Donald J Kadyk