Facebook, Inc.

Mateusz Berezecki

Brian Keith Cabral

Eitan Frachtenberg

In one embodiment, a computer server running a social networking application aggregates raw local area network (LAN) traffic data received from one or more listening nodes in one or more LANs. The aggregated LAN traffic data is comprised of multiple entries, each of which includes a MAC address for a networked device, as well as an association between each MAC address and a user of a social networking system. The computer server may then detect, identify, and qualify recurring patterns when a particular user is on the same LAN as other users of the social networking system. Based upon the qualified patterns, the social networking system may suggest friend connections or other interactions on the social networking system to the particular user.

Network-traffic-analysis-based suggestion generation

A camera system provides a live preview that provides a user device a pseudo-real time depiction of what the camera assembly is imaging. The camera system captures images from a plurality of cameras. The camera system captures images from a plurality of cameras. The camera system stores the captured images in respective memory locations of a buffer. The stored captured images form a high priority data stream that generates content associated with the portion of the local area. The camera system selects, as part of a low priority data stream, one or more of the images from memory locations. The camera system encodes the selected one or more images. The camera system packetizes the encoded one or more images to form an image frame in a video feed. The camera system provides the image frame to a user device that presents the image frame as part of the video feed.

Three-dimensional, 360-degree virtual reality camera live preview

Techniques for a network interface controller (NIC) capable of performing general-purpose computing tasks without intervention from a central processing unit (CPU) are disclosed herein. The network interface controller includes a circuit board, a network interface, a computer bus interface and a processor. The network interface is operatively coupled to the circuit board for receiving network packets. The computer bus interface is operatively coupled to the circuit board for receiving a general-purpose program. The processor is operatively coupled to the circuit board and capable of executing the general-purpose program to process the network packets.

Network interface device having general-purpose computing capability

In one embodiment, a networked device running a social networking application logs local area network traffic in order to maintain a table of connected users on the same LAN. In such embodiments, the networked device uploads its log of LAN traffic to a social networking system, which associates each MAC address with a user of the social networking system, and detects and identifies recurring patterns when the user of the networked device and other users are on the same LAN. Based upon such patterns, the social networking system may suggest that the two users become friends or otherwise interact on the social networking system. In particular embodiments, a networked device running a social networking application may broadcast mDNS messages containing its social networking ID, allowing other similarly configured devices on the same LAN to interact with the user of the device.

Network traffic-analysis-based suggestion generation

Embodiments of the invention operate within the context of a system with a processor providing memory-monitoring functionality. The lower-privileged code of a first process, such as user application code, communicates directly with higher-privileged code of a second process, such as interrupt-handling code of the operating system kernel, without using a software interrupt or other gate mechanism. This enhances overall system performance by eliminating the saving of state and processing inherent in interrupt handling, and also avoids missing events that may occur while other interrupts are masked during event handling. Specifically, the second process initializes a monitored memory area that is directly accessible by processes having at least the privilege level of the first process. The second process further initializes memory-monitoring hardware of the processor to monitor writes to the monitored memory area, such that the second process will resume execution from a dormant state when a write takes place.

Invoking operating system functionality without the use of system calls

An application process operates at a privilege level lower than that of the kernel code of the operating system in which the process executes. When the application process requires performance of an operating system service for which the process lacks sufficient privileges to perform directly, rather than repeatedly requesting the service by issuing separate software interrupts, the process instead accumulates the data corresponding to the different service requests in a data container block and defers performance of the service. Whenever the process needs to complete the service, rather than deferring its performance, the process issues a single software interrupt that causes the kernel to use the accumulated data in the data container block to perform each of the N accumulated service requests. This reduces the number of interrupts that must be handled from N to one, thereby greatly reducing the overhead imposed by interrupt handling.

Growing community of inventors

San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Mateusz Berezecki