JP2002359646A - Transmission reception system for electronic mail - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a transmission reception system for electronic mail with which a very low toll is charged on a user even when the user receives a great number of electronic mail a day. SOLUTION: The transmission reception system for electronic mail comprises a transmitter terminal 2 at a transmitter side, a receiver terminal 3 (a mobile phone compatible with the i-application) on which a Java program can run, and a Web mail server 4 being a primary provider, which are all interconnected by a packet network 1. The Web mail server 4 receives electronic mail from the transmitter terminal 2, compresses the electronic mail and directly transmits the compressed electronic mail to the receiver terminal 3 on request from the receiver terminal 3. The receiver terminal 3 accesses the Web mail server 4 to download a decompression program (Java) to decompress the electronic mail, uses the decompression program to decompress the compressed electronic mail from the Web mail server 4 and gives the decompressed electronic mail to a browser which displays the electronic mail.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic mail transmission / reception system, and more particularly, to a reduction in communication network usage charges when transmitting a plurality of electronic mails.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art With the spread of the Internet, information exchange by e-mail is increasing.

[0003] For example, the exchange of electronic mail is SMT.
P (Simple Mail Transfer Pr)
(autocol).

On the other hand, some mobile phones have a Web browser function. Such a mobile phone has received Web mail by downloading it in HTML for browser display.

[0005] A mobile phone network service company charges a call charge in packet units.

[0006]

However, if the number of e-mails addressed to the user is several or several tens per day, the charge for the packet unit is high and the communication charge is high.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in consideration of the above problems, and has as its object to provide an e-mail transmission / reception system in which a very low call charge is received even if a large number of e-mails are received per day.

[0008]

According to the present invention, there is provided a portable terminal having a function capable of executing an arbitrary program, and the number of packets corresponding to the number of bytes of an e-mail to be transmitted, and the e-mail is transmitted via a packet network. This is an electronic mail transmission / reception system including a provider that transmits and charges a fee based on the number of transmitted packets.

The provider accepts and stores an e-mail of each user via the packet network, and when an e-mail is requested from the portable terminal, searches for an e-mail having an e-mail address indicated by the e-mail request. After performing compression to eliminate the redundant portion from the header and the body of the retrieved electronic mail, the electronic mail is transmitted to the portable terminal in the packet.

[0010] The mobile phone includes a program for decompressing a compressed e-mail from the provider, requests and receives an e-mail addressed to the user from the provider, and receives the received e-mail. Is decompressed by the decompression program and displayed on the screen.

When a mail request is received from the portable terminal, an electronic mail having the mail address indicated by the mail request is searched, and all the searched electronic mails are joined into one. After performing compression to eliminate the part, the packet is transmitted.

The provider is a Web mail server, and the portable terminal is a Java-compatible portable telephone.

[0013]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS <Embodiment 1> FIG. 1 is a schematic block diagram of an electronic mail compression transmission system according to Embodiment 1 of the present invention. The system shown in FIG. 1 includes, on a packet network 1 (WAN, Internet, etc.), a transmitting side transmitting terminal 2 (mobile phone, portable personal computer, etc.) and a receiving side terminal 3 (i-appli compatible Mobile phone) and the primary provider, the web mail server 4,
The e-mail from the sending terminal 2 is sent to the Web mail server 4
, And compresses the e-mail according to a request from the receiving terminal 3 and directly transmits the compressed e-mail to the receiving terminal 3.

The receiving terminal 3 (mobile phone) is compatible with Java (for example, i-appli), and accesses the Web mail server 4 to decompress an electronic mail (J).
After downloading ava), the compressed e-mail from the Web mail server 4 is decompressed by the above-mentioned decompression program, and the decompressed e-mail is passed to the browser for display.

The Web mail server 4 has the receiving terminal 3
It has a function of transmitting a decompression program after receiving a user registration request from a (mobile phone) and a function of compressing and transmitting an e-mail when receiving a mail request from the receiving terminal 3 (mobile phone). .

This compression is performed by the Huffman method, LZ method, ZIP
It is preferable to use an LZH method or the like.

The exchange of e-mail is performed by using SMTP.
The transmission to the receiving terminal uses HTTP.

Java is characterized by having a robust security function that can dynamically provide a program from a server to a client in the form of an applet independent of a platform.

A mechanism for executing a Java program on the Internet is as follows. The Java program is stored in a server in the form of an intermediate code called byte code, downloaded to a client machine on the Internet, and executed in an execution environment called a Java virtual machine. Run on

The electronic mail compression / transmission system configured as described above will be described with reference to the sequence diagram of FIG.

(Registration) The user operates the receiving terminal 3 (for example, i
Operate the application compatible mobile phone) and set the provider (W
Request the homepage of the e-mail server 4) (d
1, d2).

The receiving terminal 3 (mobile phone) displays this home page on the screen of the receiving terminal 3 (mobile phone) by a browser function.

Then, the user selects registration, and enters a name,
Enter your address, phone number, password, e-mail address, etc.
It is transmitted to the e-mail server 4 (d3).

The Web mail server 4 stores the name, telephone number, mail address, address, and the like transmitted from the user in the account file (d4), and transmits a registration completion notification to the receiving terminal 3 (portable terminal) (d4). d5).

Next, the Web mail server 4 transmits an i-αppli compatible e-mail decompression program to the receiving terminal 3 (mobile phone) (d6).

The receiving terminal 3 (mobile phone) receives and stores (Java) the transmitted decompression program.

(Use) Next, an example of use of the present embodiment will be described. In this description, it is assumed that a plurality of mails from the transmitting terminal 2 are stored in the mail spool 6.

Then, the user logs in to the Web mail server 4 as a provider at an appropriate time (d1
0).

The Web mail server 4 uses the mail address and telephone number of the receiving terminal 3 (mobile phone) upon login to perform authentication by comparing with the account list in the account file 5 (d11), and the authentication result is obtained. And notifies the mail spool 6 whether or not there is a mail addressed to the user (d12).

The user sees the result displayed on the receiving terminal 3 (mobile phone), makes a mail request, and causes the Web mail server 4 to transmit the request (d13).

The Web mail server 4 performs the processing described in FIG. 3 in response to the mail transmission request.

That is, when a mail reading request from a user is received (S1), it is determined whether or not there is account information (authorized user) corresponding to the user's mail address and password from the mail spool 6 (S1).
2).

If it is determined in step S2 that the user is a permitted user, the user's mail is read from the mail spool (S3), and it is determined whether there are a plurality of mails (unread mails) addressed to the user (step S3). S4).

If it is determined in step S4 that there is not a plurality of mails, that is, if there is one mail, the mail is passed to a mail compression process (not shown) to compress the mail (S5) and transmit it. (S6: d14 in FIG. 2).
This transmission is performed by designating a decompression program compatible with the i-appli of the mobile phone.

The above-mentioned mail compression is based on the Huffman method, LZ
Method, ZIP method, LZH, etc., which removes redundant information from information and extracts essential information. For example, if each character is represented by an 8-bit code as shown in FIG. 4A, the appearance frequency of each character in the data to be compressed is checked, and as shown in FIG. Assign a shorter code to the more frequently used characters. Note that the first three bits of the code represent the number of bits (1 to 7) that follow (c in FIG. 4).

If the character string is "AAABBC" as shown in FIG. 5A, for example, the character string will be as shown in FIG. 5B if not compressed, which is 48 bits. 24 bits as shown in 5 (c)
Becomes

If it is determined in step S4 that there are a plurality of mails, a mail merge process for connecting mails having the same mail address is performed (S7), and the process proceeds to step S5 to compress the connected mails. .

If it is determined in step S2 that the received mail request is not the authorized user, the fact that the mail request cannot be used is notified by a message (S8).

On the other hand, when the compressed mail is transmitted, the mobile phone 3 receives and decompresses the mail by using a pre-downloaded i-appli compatible decompression program. For example, in the case of a plurality of e-mails, the transmitted e-mail has an e-mail delimiter. The delimiter is used to separate the e-mail, and the e-mail is decompressed by an i-αppli decompression program (Java
Decompress in a) (d15), and refer to the decompressed mail (d16).

That is, according to the present embodiment, when one packet has a length of 200 bytes, for example, the length of the text of one mail becomes 1000 bytes.
Even 000 bytes are transmitted as one packet. Therefore, the mobile phone user can receive the mail cheaply. Even if the fee per mail is low, it will be very cheap on a monthly or yearly basis.

In this embodiment, mails addressed to the same user are collectively compressed. Therefore, when a user requests a mail, if there are several mails addressed to the user and several tens of mails exist in the mail spool, the mails are connected and compressed all at once.

For this reason, when a plurality of mails are transmitted from the web mail server, the usage fee of the communication network becomes extremely low when viewed on a monthly basis or on a yearly basis.

FIG. 6 shows the size of a message (mail) after compression according to the present embodiment. The compression of a mail of about 50 bytes to 160 bytes is not so large, but is 400 to 1200 bytes. 400 bytes when the byte mail is compressed (single mail or multiple mails)
Approximately 180 bytes are compressed in bytes, and 120 bytes are compressed.
About 0 bytes are compressed about 700 bytes. That is, the compression is 50% or more.

<Second Embodiment> FIG. 7 is a sequence diagram for explaining a second embodiment. In the present embodiment, a usage example of the receiving terminal 3 (mobile terminal) will be described. In this description, it is assumed that a plurality of mails from the transmitting terminal 2 are stored in the mail spool 6 and have already been registered. Also assume that you have already downloaded the email decompression program.

The user logs in to the Web mail server 4 as a provider at an appropriate time (d20).

The Web mail server 4 performs authentication by using the mail address and telephone number of the receiving terminal 3 (mobile phone) in comparison with the account list of the account file 5 upon login, and returns the authentication result ( d22).

The user views the result displayed on the receiving terminal 3 (mobile phone), makes a mail request (a mail list request in the present embodiment), and causes the Web mail server 4 to transmit the request (d23).

In response to the mail transmission request, the Web mail server 4 reads all the mails addressed to this user from the mail spool, generates a list (mail list) summarizing the sender addresses of these mails, It transmits (HTTP) to the receiving terminal (mobile phone) (d22).

The receiving terminal 3 (cellular phone) receives the mail list, displays it on the screen by the browser function, and the user selects the mail he wants to see immediately by looking at the mail list (d2).
4), a mail request (to which the selected mail address is added) is performed (d25).

The Web mail server 4 reads the mail address requested to be mailed, takes out the mail corresponding to this mail address from the mail spool 6 by POP (d26), and transmits it to the receiving terminal 3 (mobile phone) (d26). d
26).

That is, when a plurality of mails are selected, the plurality of mails are joined together, compressed in the same manner as in the first embodiment, and transmitted with the number of mails and the original data size added. . Also, when one mail is selected, only that one mail is compressed.

On the other hand, when the compressed mail is transmitted, the mobile phone 3 receives and decompresses the mail by using a previously downloaded decompression program corresponding to the i-appli (d2).
7). The decompressed mail is referred to (d28).

When the mail list is displayed on the receiving terminal 3 (portable terminal), the number of mails in the list may be small, or there may be no mail that the user wants to see immediately. In such a case, the user operates the receiving terminal (mobile phone) to specify the time (d29).

For example, input after 10 hours. The timer is started in response to the input of the time designation and the time is measured.

When the specified time (after 10 hours) has passed, the user automatically logs in to the Web mail server 4 again, receives the mail list, selects the mail or selects all the mails, and selects the Web. Send from mail server.

Therefore, after 10 hours, more mails will be present on the Web mail server 4.
Fees are lower because more mail will be spliced and compressed.

When the user's mail is present, the Web mail server 4 transmits the presence of the mail as a voice message to the user's mobile phone. May be transmitted after being compressed.

<Third Embodiment> FIG. 8 is a system configuration diagram of a third embodiment. The third embodiment shows that a login, a mail request, and a mail transmission from a receiving terminal (mobile phone: Java compatible) are received by HTTPd, and an account reference and a mail compression are performed by a ZOLAR program. It is.

ZOLAR can obtain CGI environment variables and HTTP request header information on the usage environment using various functions.

In addition, either NSAPI or Apache interface class (NSAPI class, Ap
ache class) is implemented, and these classes are described in the form of any of the above-described classes, and obtain an HTTP request header, obtain a received message,
It has functions such as setting request headers and sending outgoing messages, so that it can be determined from which browser and from whom.

That is, ZOLAR is described in the C ++ language, and in a mechanism of encapsulating one of the features of this object-oriented language, that is, combining data and procedures, ZOLAR is written in either NSAPI or Apache format. Is provided.

For this reason, ZOLAR CORE 9 has:
A class setting interface for selecting either the NSAPI class or the Apache class is provided.

This class setting is set in advance in consultation with the user. If the user uses NSAPI, the class is set to NSAPI, and if Apache, the class is set to Apache.

That is, by mounting an interface that can easily switch the connection, for example, at the time of shipment, an interface compatible with Apache and Netscape can be used.
Those compatible with Server are different interface programs.

That is, ZOLAR combines the requested mails, performs compression processing, and transmits the data to the portable terminal.

Although the above embodiment has been described as a Web mail, any HTML e-mail may be used.
Also in this case, the compression is performed by using the LZH method,
Compression using the Huffman method, etc.
a.

The decompression of the mobile phone and the compression on the server side are not limited to Java, but may be C ++ language.

[0068]

As described above, according to the present invention, when a provider requests an e-mail from a portable terminal having a function of executing an arbitrary program, the header part of the e-mail and the redundant part of the text are provided. Compression processing to eliminate
Then, the portable terminal decompresses and displays the decompressed program using an executable decompression program.

Therefore, even if the mail sent to the user's mobile phone is a long mail longer than a predetermined number of bytes, the number of bytes of the mail is reduced, and the number of packets is also reduced. The effect of being cheap is obtained.

When there are a plurality of mails to be sent to the user's mobile phone, the number of packets is also reduced since the number of bytes of the mail is reduced by connecting these and compressing and transmitting the mail. For this reason, the effect that the charge of a communication network becomes cheap is acquired.

Therefore, the fee is very low for a user who receives several tens of mails per day.

Further, a list of e-mails addressed to the user is transmitted to the cellular phone, a sender is selected from the list, and the provider searches all the selected e-mails, compresses the e-mails, and compresses the e-mail. Send to phone.

Therefore, even if there are a plurality of e-mails, the user can immediately receive the e-mail from the person who wants it, and since the e-mail is compressed and transmitted, the effect of reducing the fee is obtained.

Further, when a large number of senders are selected, the mails from these senders are joined and compressed and transmitted, so that the effect of reducing the charge is obtained.

Further, since the mail is transmitted after a certain period of time, more mails are collected, and as a result, more mails can be compressed and transmitted.

Further, since the script language is used, the decompression program can be easily downloaded from the provider side and the e-mail can be decompressed.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram of an electronic mail transmission / reception system according to a first embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a sequence diagram illustrating the operation of the first embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart illustrating an operation of the Web mail server according to the first embodiment.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram illustrating compression according to the first embodiment;

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram for explaining compression according to the first embodiment;

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram illustrating an effect of compression.

FIG. 7 is a sequence diagram illustrating an operation of the second embodiment.

FIG. 8 is a schematic configuration diagram of a third embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 packet network 2 sender terminal 3 receiver terminal (mobile phone supporting i-αppli) 4 Web mail server

Claims (7)

[Claims] 1. A portable terminal having a function capable of executing an arbitrary program, a packet number corresponding to the number of bytes of an electronic mail to be transmitted, transmitting the electronic mail through a packet network, and An e-mail transmission / reception system comprising a provider that charges the user at the mobile terminal, wherein the provider receives and stores the e-mail of each user via the packet network, and when an e-mail request is received from the mobile terminal, The electronic mail having the e-mail address indicated by the e-mail request is searched, and after performing compression to eliminate redundant parts from the header and the body of the searched e-mail, the electronic mail is transmitted to the mobile terminal in the packet. A decompressing program for the compressed e-mail from the provider; Email transceiver system, characterized in that to request and receive mail, and displays the compressed e-mail thus received on the screen is reconstituted in the decompression program. 2. The provider retrieves an e-mail having an e-mail address indicated by the e-mail request when the e-mail is requested from the portable terminal, and connects all the retrieved e-mails into one. 2. The electronic mail transmission / reception system according to claim 1, wherein the packet is transmitted after compression for eliminating the redundant portion is performed. 3. When the searched e-mail is one,
3. The electronic mail transmission / reception system according to claim 1, wherein the electronic mail is compressed as it is. 4. The provider stores the user registration information when the mobile terminal transmits a request for a licenser registration and transmits the decompression program to the mobile terminal for download. The electronic mail transmission / reception system according to claim 1, 2, or 3, wherein: 5. When the provider receives an electronic mail transmission request from the mobile terminal,
Means for searching the electronic mail having the mail address of the transmission request from the mail file, generating a list of sender names of all the searched electronic mails, and transmitting the list to the portable terminal; Means for retrieving an e-mail having the e-mail address indicated by the e-mail request when the e-mail request is transmitted from the portable terminal after transmitting the list, and compressing and transmitting the retrieved e-mail. The mobile phone, after requesting the e-mail to the provider, when the list is transmitted, the list is displayed on a screen, and the sender name of the list of the screen is selected,
5. The electronic mail transmission / reception system according to claim 1, further comprising means for transmitting a mail request in which said sender names are paired to said provider at said mail request. 6. The method according to claim 1, wherein, when compressing and transmitting the plurality of e-mails, the provider adds the number of e-mails and the size of the original data and transmits them. 5. An electronic mail transmission / reception system according to item 5. 7. The electronic mail transmission / reception system according to claim 1, wherein the provider is a Web mail server, and the mobile terminal is a Java-compatible mobile phone.