PATENTS
BROADCASTING NETWORK
A technique for broadcasting data across a network is provided. An originating participant sends data to another participant, which in turn sends the data that it receives from a neighbor participant to its other neighbor participants. Communication in the broadcast network is controlled by a contact module that locates the neighbor participants to which the seeking participant can be connected and by a join module that establishes the connection between the neighbor participants and the seeking participant. Data is numbered sequentially so that data that is received out of order can be queued and rearranged
INFORMATION DELIVERY SERVICE
A computer network for providing an information delivery service for a plurality of participants over the network is disclosed. Each participant has connections to at least three neighbor participants. An originating participant sends data to the other participants by sending the data through each of its connections to its neighbor participants. Further, each participant sends data that it receives from a neighbor participant to its other neighbor participants. The network is m-regular where m is the exact number of neighbor participants of each participant and the network is an incomplete graph.
CONTACTING A BROADCAST CHANNEL
A method of connecting to a network through a portal computer. A seeking computer dials the communications ports of a portal computer until it locates a call-in port. A port ordering algorithm is used to identify the call-in port. Communications ports selected by the port ordering algorithm may be re-ordered. The seeking computer uses the selected call-in port to request that the portal computer coordinate the connection of the seeking computer to the network
JOINING A BROADCAST CHANNEL
A technique for adding a participant to a network is provided. This technique allows for the simultaneous sharing of information among many participants in a network without the placement of a high overhead on the underlying communication network. To connect to the broadcast channel, a seeking computer first locates a computer that is fully connected to the broadcast channel. The seeking computer then establishes a connection with a number of the computers that are already connected to the broadcast channel. The technique for adding a participant to a network includes identifying a pair of participants that are connected to the network, disconnecting the participants of the identified pair from each other, and connecting each participant of the identified pair of participants to the added participant.