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Patexia Contest

CONTEST

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Problem

Patexia is looking for descriptions of a method to manage the rate that a network node broadcasts a message to a  portion of the nodes it’s connected to in order to avoid sending an overwhelming burst of network traffic. The method should accomplish this by broadcasting to a subset of recipients, waiting, then repeating the broadcast/wait cycle until the node transmits to all recipients.

Submitted documents describing this system must be:

  • filed or published before 05/23/1997
  • not on the known references list

The entire submission must describe a system where:

  1. the network of nodes are all directly connected to each other in some manner either through a dedicated trunk or a virtual circuit (see Figure 1 below)
  2. a node will recognize an event that requires it to send a message to other nodes that might be affected by the event
  3. that node will identify the other nodes that are affected by this event, which must only be a fraction of all the nodes it is connected to
  4. that node will then broadcast the message to only the affected nodes
  5. however, this broadcast will be limited to some predetermined maximum rate by broadcasting the message to a subset of affected nodes, waiting for a predetermined time delay, then repeating this broadcast/wait cycle until the node has finished broadcasting to all affected nodes


Figure 1 of US 877 showing each node (12) connected to the other nodes either through dedicated trunks (14) or virtual circuits (16)

This contest is for a prior art search for US Patent 6,130,877, with a focus on claims 1, 4, 8, and 11, in the context of a network systems administration standpoint of limiting the amount of traffic with which an individual node can flood the overall network.

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Questions

#QuestionValue
1 Is the reference either a US patent filed, a foreign patent published, or a non-patent document published before May 23rd, 1997? T/F
2 Is the reference generally about managing the rate that a network node broadcasts a message to a portion of the nodes it’s connected to in order to avoid sending an overwhelming burst of network traffic? T/F
3Does the reference show a data communication network where each node has a direct connection to the other nodes in the network (e.g. through a dedicated trunk or a virtual circuit)? 5
4 Does the reference show that a node can broadcast a signal by (1) recognizing an event, (2) determining the network nodes affected by the event, and (3) broadcasting a message about this event to the selected affected nodes? 5
5 (4a) Does the reference further show that the selected nodes at step (2) are a fraction of the total number of connected nodes? 30
6 (4b) Does the reference explicitly use the term “broadcasting” to refer to the act of sending the message at step (3)? 5
7 (4c) Does the reference further show that the node controls the rate of broadcast by capping it to be no faster than a predetermined rate? 45
8 (7a) Does the reference further show that the rate of broadcast is controlled by (a) sending to a portion of the affected nodes, (b) waiting for a predetermined time delay, then repeating steps (a) and (b) until all the affected nodes from step (2) are broadcasted to? 10

Additional Notes

Prior Art Search

This is a Prior Art Search contest aimed at determining if a patent idea was known and publicly available before a patent was filed.

+5 bonus points will be awarded for non-patent literature and for foreign language references.

This contest will close on Wednesday, May 31st, 2015 at 11:59 PM PST.

Please review the Contest Rules. For more information on how to submit to this Contest type, please read the Intro to Prior Art Search page.

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