Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Peter Sewall Ford

Paul J Leach

Holly Knight

Ye Gu

William Michael Zintel

Amar S Gandhi

Yaron Y Goland

Ting Cai

Shyamalan Pather

Jeffrey C Schlimmer

Daniel R Weisman

Christopher M Rude

Donald R Ryan

Pradeep Bahl

Mark H Lucovsky

Richard Bruce Ward

Shaun Douglas Pierce

Daniel S Glasser

John S Holmes

Burra Gopal

Lijiang Fang

Jeremy D Stone

Samuel John George

Jay Christopher Jacobs

Paul Andrew Steckler

Steven D White

Eyal Schwartz

Jagadeesh Kalki

Winnie C Wu

Brian R Daugherty

William Raymond Hoffman

Michael B Taylor

Ramu Movva

Suresh Kannan

Walter C Hsueh

David Benjamin Auerbach

Kendall D Keil

Frank J Beeson

Yun-Qi Yuan

Yi-Wen Guu

Philip Michael Smoot

Greg Burns

Dan Teodosiu

David Michael Miller

Nk Srinivas

Art Shelest

Kenneth Fern

Walter VonKoch

Scott D Sanders

Markham MacLin

Michael Patrick Hart

Jonathan Wilkins

Norman N Ng

Jawad (Mohamed J) Khaki

Jawad Mohamed Khaki

Secure instant messaging is described. In an embodiment, a messaging device encrypts a challenge identifier to generate an encrypted challenge message, and communicates the encrypted challenge message via a peer-to-peer communication link to a recipient messaging device. The recipient messaging device decrypts the encrypted challenge message and encrypts the challenge identifier as a return challenge identifier to generate an encrypted challenge return. The messaging device receives the encrypted challenge return from the recipient messaging device, decrypts the encrypted challenge return, and verifies that the return challenge identifier matches the challenge identifier to establish that communications are secure when communicated via the peer-to-peer communication link and, optionally, to establish control policies pertaining to a communication received at the recipient messaging device.

Secure instant messaging

Instant messaging with data sharing is described. One or more of the described techniques may be employed to share data in conjunction with an instant messaging session, even if one or more clients which are to share the data are not currently available.

Instant messaging with data sharing

A system for assisting a user in selecting a packet-based telephony service provider ('PBTSP') from a group of PBTSPs, and in registering the user with the selected PBTSP for outbound and/or inbound calling. The selection of a particular PBTSP may be stored in a database, and this stored information may be used to enable the user to exchange telephone call data with one of the PBTSPs. One preferred system receives data from the user's computer device, determines whether the user is registered with one the PBTSPs and, if so, transmits data to the computer device which enables it to exchange telephone call data with one of the PBTSPs. The system also receives telephone call data from the computer device, accesses contact information for a PBTSP, and transmits the received telephone call data to the PBTSP using the accessed contact information.

Managing packet-based telephony

A schema-based service for Internet access to per-user services data, wherein access to data is based on each user's identity. The service includes a schema that defines rules and a structure for each user's data, and also includes methods that provide access to the data in a defined way. The services schema thus corresponds to a logical document containing the data for each user. The user manipulates (e.g., reads or writes) data in the logical document by data access requests through defined methods. In one implementation, the services schemas are arranged as XML documents, and the services provide methods that control access to the data based on the requesting user's identification, defined role and scope for that role. In this way, data can be accessed by its owner, and shared to an extent determined by the owner.

Schema-based services for identity-based data access

A robust device messaging framework is disclosed that enables a user to send commands to a device. A provisioning service is used to provision unique device identities and maps user web identities to device identities. The provisioning service also limits device per day provisioning attempts to limit denial of service attacks. A command service allows remote users to issue commands to a device, synchronize outgoing commands with incoming results, receive accurate feedback about whether a command was received, and maintain state information about the device. A device layer encrypts and stores device identities, authenticates itself with the command service, establishes a high-availability Internet connection to receive alerts that a command has issued, and reports results to the server-based command service.

Remote command framework for devices

A device control model provides an integrated set of addressing, naming, discovery and description processes that enables automatic, dynamic and ad-hoc self-setup by devices to interoperate with other devices on a network. This permits a computing device when introduced into a network to automatically configure so as to connect and interact with other computing devices available on the network, without a user installation experience and without downloading driver software or persisting a configuration setup for connecting and interacting with such other computing devices. Upon completing interaction with such other devices, the computing device automatically releases the setup for such other devices so as to avoid persistent device configurations that might create a configuration maintenance and management burden.

Dynamic self-configuration for ad hoc peer networking

Dynamic self-configuration for AD HOC peer networking

A universal plug and play (UPnP) device makes itself known through a set of processes&#x2014;discovery, description, control, eventing, and presentation. Following discovery of a UPnP device, an entity can learn more about the device and its capabilities by retrieving the device's description. The description includes vendor-specific manufacturer information like the model name and number, serial number, manufacturer name, URLs to vendor-specific Web sites, etc. The description also includes a list of any embedded devices or services, as well as URLs for control, eventing, and presentation. The description is written by a vendor, and is usually based on a device template produced by a UPnP forum working committee. The template is derived from a template language that is used to define elements to describe the device and any services supported by the device. The template language is written using an XML-based syntax that organizes and structures the elements.

XML-based template language for devices and services

A method and system are directed at automatically tuning a TCP receive window (RWIN). The size of the RWIN may be determined by attributes of a network card. One attribute used to size the RWIN is the speed of the adapter card. The adapter speed is readily available by polling the network card. Once the speed is known, the size of the RWIN is selected from a table and is automatically set. Alternatively, the size of the RWIN may be determined by a formula.

Method for automatic tuning of TCP receive window based on a determined bandwidth

XML-based language description for controlled devices

Growing community of inventors

Carnation, WA, United States of America

Peter Sewall Ford