State Migration Module for Seamless Cross-Device Web Session Transfer
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current technologies lack efficient mechanisms for seamlessly transferring the state of user interactions between different computing devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and desktops, especially over commercial links like wireless cellular connections, due to the large size of virtual machine state images.
Innovation Solution
A state migration module (SMM) that captures and restores the application state relative to the browser execution environment, reducing the data size by excluding low-level hardware and operating system details, and allowing incremental storage and asynchronous restoration, enabling efficient state transfer between devices.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If virtual machine technology is used to transfer state between computing devices, then the state transfer is complete and accurate, but the data size becomes very large and cannot be transmitted over commercial links
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the necessary application state information from the complete virtual machine state. Instead of transferring the entire VM image, the system identifies and transfers only the relevant portions: application DOM state, heap memory state, timer states, and network connection states. This extraction principle resolves the contradiction by maintaining state transfer accuracy while dramatically reducing data size for transmission over commercial links.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the application state into distinct components: DOM tree state, heap memory state, timer state, and network connection state. Each component is captured and transferred separately. This segmentation allows the system to transfer only the necessary state information without the overhead of a complete virtual machine image, resolving the contradiction between complete state transfer and manageable data size.
2Reliability
If the complete virtual machine state is captured, then all application state is preserved, but the transmission time and network bandwidth requirements become prohibitive
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the essential application state components needed for resumption: DOM state, heap state, timer state, and network state. By excluding unnecessary virtual machine infrastructure data, the transmission time is dramatically reduced while preserving all information necessary for complete application state restoration.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements preliminary action by capturing and serializing the application state in the background before the user actually needs to switch devices. The state is prepared and staged for transfer, allowing the actual transmission to occur quickly when needed. This reduces the perceived transmission time for the user while maintaining complete state preservation.
3Ease of operation
If tab selections are preserved when moving between devices, then user convenience is improved, but the content of the user session is not preserved
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple state preservation mechanisms into a unified approach. It combines tab selection preservation with complete application state preservation (DOM state, heap state, timer state, network state). This merging ensures that both user convenience (tab selections) and session content (application state) are preserved simultaneously, resolving the contradiction between these two features.
Data Source
AI summary
A state migration module (SMM) is described herein which seamlessly, efficiently, and correctly transfers application state between user computing devices, or between different interactions with the application on the same device that occur at different respective times. The SMM operates by capturing the current state of an application relative to the operation of a high-level execution platform (such as a browser) on which the application runs, rather than capturing the overall low-level state of the computing that runs the application. The SMM can include additional provisions designed to improve the efficiency of state migration, such as asynchronous migration, incremental delta-based migration, etc.