Email Aggregation Server Staggered Polling Scheduling
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Solution Overview
Problem
As the number of system users grows, the number of mailboxes that mail user agents (MUAs) need to poll for email messages increases, leading to potential over-utilization and under-utilization of polling resources, necessitating efficient approaches to schedule polling operations.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of an email system with an email aggregation server that performs fallback polling of subscribed mailboxes after a threshold time and staggers initial fallback polling times upon start-up, using a scheduling module to distribute polling operations uniformly across subintervals, ensuring efficient resource utilization and reducing the burden on the system.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If the number of mailboxes is increased to accommodate growing system users, then the system capacity and user coverage are improved, but the polling resource utilization becomes unbalanced with periods of over-utilization and under-utilization
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements periodic polling actions with varying intervals for different mailboxes. Instead of uniform continuous polling, the system schedules polling operations at periodic intervals that are dynamically adjusted based on mailbox activity patterns, thereby smoothing resource utilization while maintaining comprehensive coverage of all mailboxes
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces dynamic polling intervals that adapt based on system conditions and mailbox characteristics. The polling frequency is not fixed but dynamically adjusted, allowing the system to optimize resource utilization by increasing polling frequency for active mailboxes and decreasing it for inactive ones, thus resolving the contradiction between covering all mailboxes and efficient resource use
2Productivity
If polling operations are concentrated at specific times, then the system can efficiently retrieve emails, but the server experiences simultaneous high loads that reduce reliability
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the polling operations by dividing the mailbox population into different groups that are polled at different times. This segmentation distributes the load across multiple time slots, preventing simultaneous high loads on the server while ensuring all mailboxes are efficiently serviced through their respective polling intervals
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements periodic polling with staggered intervals for different mailbox groups. By scheduling polling operations periodically but at different times for different segments, the system maintains efficient email retrieval while avoiding concentration of load at any single point in time, thus preserving server reliability
3Reliability
If fallback polling is performed for all mailboxes simultaneously after threshold time, then email message retrieval is ensured, but the server experiences high simultaneous loads
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the fallback polling operations by distributing them across different time slots for different mailbox groups. Instead of executing fallback polling simultaneously for all mailboxes, the system divides the operation into manageable segments, ensuring email retrieval reliability while preventing excessive simultaneous server load
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements periodic fallback polling with staggered timing. The fallback mechanism is triggered periodically for different mailbox groups at different times rather than simultaneously, ensuring that emails are reliably retrieved while the distributed timing prevents concentration of server load during any single fallback cycle
Data Source
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AI summary
An email system may include at least one subscribed mailbox server having a plurality of subscribed mailboxes and sending a new mail indication upon receiving a new email message, and a plurality of mobile wireless communications devices. The system may further include at least one email aggregation server for polling each subscribed mailbox for email messages based upon receiving a respective new email indication therefrom, and forwarding the email messages to respective mobile wireless communications devices. The at least one email aggregation server may perform a fallback polling of each subscribed mailbox based upon not having polled the subscribed mailbox for a threshold fallback time, and stagger respective initial fallback polling times of the subscribed mailboxes upon start-up.