19251 results about "Network communication" patented technology

A wireless communication network for programming and monitoring a plurality of network-managed devices, including electronic-ink based display devices, comprising a network management computer system, a network gateway device, one or more wireless network routers, a plurality of network-managed devices, and a network coordinator. The wireless communication network of the present invention bridges the gap between wireless display networks, wireless sensor networks, and the worlds of passive, active and partially-active RFID and real-time locating systems. The wireless communication network of the present invention allows conventional communication network protocols to operate in more flexible ways in dynamic, diverse, and heterogeneous application environments, in fields including retail, healthcare, transport, logistics, manufacturing, education, etc. At the same time, the wireless communication network of the present invention is preferably based on the IEEE 802.15.4 network layer standard, which offers low-cost wireless network communication between a large number of wireless network end-devices.

The present invention consists of a secure interactive electronic account statement delivery system suitable for use over open networks such as the Internet. The invention utilizes a certification hierarchy to insure that electronic bills, invoices, and other account statements can be securely sent over open networks. The participants in the system are a certification authority, certificated banks, billers, and customers. The certification authority grants digital certificates to the certificated banks, which in turn grant digital certificates to billers and customers. Digital certificates form the basis for encryption and authentication of network communications, using public and private keys. The certificates associate a customer and biller with a certificated bank and with the electronic billing system, much like payment cards associate a customer with a payment card issuer and a particular payment card system. Digital signatures are used for authentication and non-repudiation. The certificates may be stored as digital data on storage media of a customer's or biller's computer system, or may be contained in integrated circuit or chip cards physically issued to billers and customers. The electronic bill itself may be a simple text message containing the equivalent of summary information for the bill, or may be more elaborate. In one embodiment of the invention, the electronic bill contains a number of embedded links, for example an embedded URL of a biller's world wide web server that allows the customer to interactively bring up detailed billing information by activating the link. The e-mail message may also include links to third party websites.

An energy saving device for an LED lamp mounted to an existing fixture for a fluorescent lamp where the ballast is removed or bypassed. The LEDs are positioned within a tube and electrical power is delivered from a power source to the LEDs. The LED lamp includes means for controlling the delivery of the electrical power from the power source to the LEDs, wherein the use of electrical power can be reduced or eliminated automatically during periods of non-use. Such means for controlling includes means for detecting the level of daylight in the illumination area of said least one LED, in particular a light level photosensor, and means for transmitting to the means for controlling relating to the detected level of daylight from the photosensor. The photosensor can be used in operative association with an on-off switch in power connection to the LEDs, a timer, or with a computer or logic gate array in operative association with a switch, timer, or dimmer that regulates the power to the LEDs. An occupancy sensor that detects motion or a person in the illumination area of the LEDs can be also be used in association with the photosensor and the computer, switch, timer, or dimmer, or in solo operation by itself. Two or more such LED lamps with a computer or logic gate array used with at least one of the lamps can be in network communication with at least one photosensor and/or at least one occupancy sensor to control the power to all the LEDs.

An RF addressable sensor network architecture is provided. The RF addressable sensor network includes one or more RF addressable sensors, one or more wireless sensor readers coupled to a communications network, and one or more end user devices coupled to the communications network. The RF addressable sensor network may also include a sensor network processor. An RF addressable sensor includes one or more sensor elements, one or more antennas for communicating with the wireless sensor reader, an RF power and communications interface, and RFID control module, and a sensor interface. The wireless sensor reader includes one or more antennas, a user interface, a controller, a network communications module, and an RF addressable sensor logic module.

A service module incorporated within the network infrastructure intercepts packets communicated between a client and a server to determine whether the connection corresponds to an email service. If so, the service module breaks the connection by terminating the connection with the client at the service module and opening a separate connection between the service module and the server. Packets communicated between the client and the server may then be redirected to an email compression application that monitors messages communicated between the client and the server and processes the messages in accordance with the state of the email session. For messages corresponding to connection establishment, user authentication and other protocol-specific messages, for example, the email compression application may be configured to forward the messages to the originally intended destination. Messages corresponding to an email message data, however, are buffered within the email compression application. Once the entire message has been received, the email compression application may strip the message headers and any protocol-specific data, compress the data and attach new message headers corresponding to the compressed email message. The compressed and reformatted email message is then reinserted into the data stream for transmission to the intended destination. Because compression may occur between the server and client, compression may be performed without requiring special processing by the server before email messages are sent. Furthermore, because the email messages may be compressed in a format that can be readily decompressed using decompression libraries incorporated within the operating system of client devices, such as the CAB format or GZIP format, the client may decompress received email messages utilizing software already incorporated within the operating system of the client device, without requiring download or installation of special decompression software and/or coordination of compression/decompression of email messages with the server or sending party.

A system and method for providing network access are disclosed. After connecting to a network at an access point, a user of a computing device registers for network access with a network provider. In response to the registration, the network provider sends a completion page to the computing device. The completion page includes a link to an embedded file such as a small, transparent GIF image. When the computing device retrieves the embedded file, the embedded file is associated with a header than includes an instruction to generate a network system identifier (e.g., a cookie). The network system identifier may be stored by the computing device and later used to identify the computing device as a registrant for network access with the network provider. The embedded file may also be sent at other times, such as after authentication of the user for network access.

A system has a virtual overlay infrastructure mapped onto physical resources for processing, storage and network communications, the virtual infrastructure having virtual entities for processing, storage and network communications. Virtual infrastructures of different users share physical resources but are isolated and have their own management entities. An interface between infrastructures allows controlled relaxation of the isolation, using a gateway between virtual nets, or shared virtual storage devices. This can allow businesses to share data or applications, while maintaining control of security.

A system, method and computer program product are provided for network-based scanning for potentially malicious content. Incoming and/or outgoing network communications traveling over a network are monitored, preferably at a gateway. Potentially malicious content in the network communications is identified. The identified potentially malicious content of the network communications is quarantined to help prevent damage that could be caused if the content is indeed malicious. In one embodiment, a pattern for testing the potentially malicious content network communications for malicious code can be executed. The network communications are conditionally delivered over the network based on the testing. In other embodiments, the network communications are delivered over the network after a predetermined delay and/or upon receiving a user request to release the suspect content from quarantine.

The subject invention relates to systems and methods that facilitate direct network communications between peers that operate behind Network Address Translators. In one aspect, a network communications system is provided. The system includes one or more Network Address Translators (NAT) to communicate data across a network between peers. A protocol selection component that automatically selects among a plurality of protocols according to one or more NAT types in order to determine a subset of the protocols that facilitate communications between the peers.

The present invention is drawn to an apparatus and method for providing secure network communication. Each node or computer on the network has a secure, intelligent network interface with a coprocessor that handles all network communication. The intelligent network interface can be built into a network interface card (NIC) or be a separate box between each machine and the network. The intelligent network interface encrypts outgoing packets and decrypts incoming packets from the network based on a key and algorithm managed by a centralized management console (CMC) on the network. The intelligent network interface can also be configured by the CMC with dynamically distributed code to perform authentication functions, protocol translations, single sign-on functions, multi-level firewall functions, distinguished-name based firewall functions, centralized user management functions, machine diagnostics, proxy functions, fault tolerance functions, centralized patching functions, Web-filtering functions, virus-scanning functions, auditing functions, and gateway intrusion detection functions.

The present invention generally relates to blockchain technology. Specifically, this invention relates to adapting blockchain technology for the storage of voting data in an electronic voting system. The system includes a distributed network of voting machines in communication with each other. Each voting machine has a barcode scanner, a network communications device and a computer system running a voting client. Votes are received through the barcode scanner or a voter interface system and stored securely on a blockchain. The tally for various candidates in the election is updated and stored as each vote is received and counted. This creates an auditable trail of votes and the tally which can be used to detect, correct, and prevent fraud and error in the vote counting process.

A voice-activated command interface module for interacting with a plurality of home-based electronic devices so as to allow for a remotely-located home owner to communicate with, command and control various ones of the electronic devices. The module includes a plurality of communication ports, each communication port associated with a different type of communication interface for providing communications to and from the plurality of electronic devices. The module also includes a voice network communication port for receiving the voice commands from the home owner and a data network communication port for transmitting monitoring and control information between the plurality of electronic devices and the home owner. In operation, the command interface module is responsive to voice commands received from a remote user via an incoming telephone line (either data or voice). A voice recognition unit within the command interface module is utilized to translate the received voice signal into an “action/control” signal and then perform the desired activity.

A system has a virtual overlay infrastructure mapped onto physical resources for processing, storage and network communications, the virtual infrastructure having virtual entities for processing, storage and network communications. Each virtual infrastructure can be passivated by suspending applications, stopping operating systems, and storing state, to enable later reactivation. This is simpler for a complete virtual infrastructure than for groups of virtual entities and physical entities. It enables cloned virtual infrastructure to be created for testing, upgrading or sharing without risk to the parent. On failure, reversion to a previous working clone is feasible.

In some embodiments, the invention involves protecting network communications in a virtualized platform. An embodiment of the present invention is a system and method relating to protecting network communication flow using packet encoding/certification and the network stack. One embodiment uses a specialized engine or driver in the network stack to encode packets before being sent to physical network controller. The network controller may use a specialized driver to decode the packets, or have a hardware implementation of a decoder. If the decoded packet is certified, the packet is transmitted. Otherwise, the packet is dropped. An embodiment of the present invention utilizes virtualization architecture to implement the network communication paths. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

A protocol, method, and apparatus for managing network communications which are particularly well suited for ATM communications across a wireless medium. Contiguous time slots within a frame are allocated to each node having traffic to send. Each node is assured a nominal bandwidth, and excess bandwidth is distributed by demand. The allocation of excess bandwidth can be dependent upon the size of the buffer at each node, as well as the time-criticality of each message. Nodes communicate their requests for allocation by appending such control information to the first of their transmitted packets. The allocation, of each node's transmit and receive time slots, is transmitted to all the nodes at the beginning of each frame. Thereafter, each node need not participate on the network until their allocated time periods, thereby allowing portable devices to enter inactive states to conserve power. The network is operated in a connection mode; connections are established in a relatively non-interfering manner by the use of periodically occurring beacons. Inactive, unconnected, nodes need only monitor the network during these beacon periods, further allowing for power conservation.

A policy agent of a network performs an out-of-band user authentication process to verify the identity of a user of a client computer and associates the network data received from the client computer with the user. When the client computer initiates a network data connection to or through the policy agent, the policy agent sends an encrypted challenge to the client computer. The challenge is encrypted with a private key of the policy agent. When the client computer receives the challenge, it decrypts the challenge and prepares a message digest value based on the challenge and the network data sent by the user. The message digest value is then encrypted with the private key of the user to form a response, and the response is sent to the policy agent. The policy agent decrypts the response with the public key of the user to obtain the message digest value and calculates a digest value based on the challenge and the received network data. The policy agent then compares the calculated digest value with the decrypted digest value. A match between the two digest values indicates that the user is successfully authenticated and that the received network data are associated with the user. The policy agent may then apply network policies based on the credentials of the authenticated user.

A computer network communication method and system wherein software rendering software is interposed in the data communication path between a browser running on a user computer and the internet data sources (for example, internet-accessible server computers) that the user browser wants to receive information from. The software rendering application gets data from internet data sources, but this data may contain malware. To provide enhanced security, the software rendering application renders this data to form a new browser readable code set (for example, an xml page with CSS layers), and this new and safe browser readable code set is sent along to the browser on the user computer for appropriate presentation to the user. As part of the rendering process, dedicated and distinct virtual machines may be used to render certain portion of the data, such as executable code. These virtual machines may be watched, and quickly destroyed if it is detected that they have encountered some type of malware.