Classifications

• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L12/00—Data switching networks
  • H04L12/02—Details
  • H04L12/16—Arrangements for providing special services to substations
  • H04L12/18—Arrangements for providing special services to substations for broadcast or conference, e.g. multicast
  • H04L12/1813—Arrangements for providing special services to substations for broadcast or conference, e.g. multicast for computer conferences, e.g. chat rooms
  • H04L12/1818—Conference organisation arrangements, e.g. handling schedules, setting up parameters needed by nodes to attend a conference, booking network resources, notifying involved parties
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L67/00—Network arrangements or protocols for supporting network services or applications
  • H04L67/01—Protocols
  • H04L67/02—Protocols based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L67/00—Network arrangements or protocols for supporting network services or applications
  • H04L67/01—Protocols
  • H04L67/10—Protocols in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L67/00—Network arrangements or protocols for supporting network services or applications
  • H04L67/01—Protocols
  • H04L67/131—Protocols for games, networked simulations or virtual reality
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L69/00—Network arrangements, protocols or services independent of the application payload and not provided for in the other groups of this subclass
  • H04L69/30—Definitions, standards or architectural aspects of layered protocol stacks
  • H04L69/32—Architecture of open systems interconnection [OSI] 7-layer type protocol stacks, e.g. the interfaces between the data link level and the physical level
  • H04L69/322—Intralayer communication protocols among peer entities or protocol data unit [PDU] definitions
  • H04L69/329—Intralayer communication protocols among peer entities or protocol data unit [PDU] definitions in the application layer [OSI layer 7]

Definitions

• the present invention generally relates to chat rooms over computer networks, such as the INTERNET, and more particularly to client generated server independent chat rooms over a computer network.
• a client 2 is able to connect to a chat room 3 stored in a server 4 via a computer network 5.
• the server is an IRC servers network of three servers jointly referenced 6, the network is the INTERNET and the client is a PC connected to the INTERNET.
• the user operates its client 2 to connect to chat room 3 located in server 4, in order to view the user list 8 .
• Other servers such as the Internet Location Server (ILS) operate in the same fashion.
• ILS Internet Location Server
• chat rooms are server(s) dependent they are limited in their performance and use. For example, as illustrated in Fig. 1 , ILS server clients cannot join an IRC server chat room and vice versa. This results in two separate chat rooms having two different plurality of users and thus requiring the user to run two different clients as illustrated by client lists 8 and 18 although both plurality of clients are interested in the same content 9.
• FIG. 1 illustrates the operation of prior art chat rooms on servers of different type, i.e. IRC and ILS
• the same also applies to different servers of the same type, i.e. if both servers 4 and 14 were of the IRC or the ILS type.
• the present invention is a client generated chat room.
• client refers herein throughout the specification and claims to any kind of application running on a computer connected to a computer network, in the preferred embodiment to the INTERNET.
• user refers herein to the person using the client.
• chat room refers herein throughout the specification and claims to a virtual space in which a plurality of users co-present in the chat room are capable of exchanging any type of information, such as audio, video, textual, graphic and any combination therebetween.
• the present invention provides a client generated chat room which does not depend on any single chat room server or servers.
• the client generated chat room of the present invention allows the user of that client co-presence with users connected to chat rooms of different servers of the same type (e.g. different IRC servers) and/or to chat rooms of different servers type (e.g. IRC and ILS).
• a method for producing a client generated chat room over a computer network includes the steps of: a. executing in the client, an application enabling selection of a chat room; b. selecting the chat room, the selection triggers connection to users in at least two independent servers of the same type or of a different type; and c. adding the users from the at least two independent servers to the client generated chat room.
• the application is implemented in the client or in a server in the computer network.
• the computer network is the INTERNET.
• the triggering activates a chat room URL which points to a chat room in an HTTP server.
• the two independent servers are IRC or ILS servers or a combination therebetween.
• the step of adding also including the step of removing duplicate users from the two independent servers.
• the chat room includes a users list and shared content by the users currently co-present in the chat room.
• the step of selecting includes selecting the chat room through a multi level menu.
• chat room produced by the method of the invention.
• Fig. 1 is a schematic pictorial illustration of prior art chat rooms
• Figs. 2A and 2B are a schematic pictorial illustration of the chat room of the present invention according to one embodiment and a method of generating same, respectively;
• Figs. 3A - 3C are three exemplary displays of the chat room of Fig. 2;
• Figs. 4A - 4D are four non limiting exemplary embodiments of the chat room of the present invention.
• Figs. 2A and 2B illustrate a client generated chat room 20 according to one embodiment of the present invention and the method of generating and utilizing same.
• the client generated chat room of the present invention is a universal chat room, that is, it is characterized by co-presence of users utilizing different directory servers.
• chat room 20 is virtually located in client 21 and shared by users of both IRC servers 6 and ILS server 14 connected to client 21 via the INTERNET 5.
• a user operating client 21 connects to the INTERNET 5 (step 22) and executes (step 23) a universal chat room application capable of generating client generated chat rooms.
• this application is activated from the INTERNET Phone Application for multimedia communication over the INTERNET, commercially available from VocalTec Ltd. of Herzelia, Israel.
• a multilevel menu which includes a main menu 31 , a main index 32, topics 33, chat room icons 34, chat room title name and status 35, a list of the chat room users 36 and shared content 37, indicated by chat room file content, and an indication of other chat rooms in which the user is present 38.
• These are ordered in an hierarchy, from menu 31 which is at the highest level, down to the chat room user list 36 and shared content 37 (Fig. 3B).
• a chat room URL is activated from the INTERNET browser or from any other application.
• the file pointed to by the URL is retrieved from an HTTP server or from any other place, such as a hard disk in a PC.
• the file uses HTML syntax and can be embedded in an HTML file without distracting standard INTERNET browser displays when they display such a file.
• the file is parsed and fields describing the chat rooms are read. If the LOCATION field (all fields refer to the file format described herein below) points to another chat room file then this file is also retrieved in a similar way and the fields from the new file are added to the description, overriding the old fields if the same fields are found. This continues until the last chat room file does not point to another chat room file. A virtual chat room icon is retrieved from the URL in the ICON field. If the SRC field points to an HTML content file then this file is retrieved from an INTERNET server or another place and displayed as the chat room content. If the SRC field does not exist then the chat room file is used as the content file.
• steps 25 through 27 the user selects a chat room by multiple selection through the hierarchy. For example, after the user has received the five level menu of Figs. 3A -3C, the user then selects a topic (step 25). An icon within the topics (step 26) is used to select a sub-topic, such as sixties music, as in the example of Fig. 2 or a computer game, as shown in the example of Figs. 3B and 3C (step 27). This selection triggers the generation of the specific client generated chat room and the user receives a current user list 36 and a current shared content 37 (step 28) of the client generated chat room 20.
• a topic for example, after the user has received the five level menu of Figs. 3A -3C, the user then selects a topic (step 25). An icon within the topics (step 26) is used to select a sub-topic, such as sixties music, as in the example of Fig. 2 or a computer game, as shown in the example of Figs. 3B and 3C (step 27
• the client connects to the server described in the chat room file SERVERS field, which also contains the server type, for example IRC or ILS.
• the SERVERJJRL field can point to a file containing a list of IRC servers that form an IRC network.
• the server list file is also retrieved and one of the servers is used as the IRC server.
• the ROOM field is used as the name of the IRC room to join.
• the PRIVATE field is used in this case to specify if the IRC chat room is private or public.
• the list of users is retrieved from the IRC server chat room or from the ILS server and translated from native server format to a uniform format which is identical for all servers.
• the user list is then filtered according to the rules in the FILTER field.
• chat room 20 of the present invention is server independent. It is located in client 21 , in the non limiting example of Fig. 2A, and it unifies, that is it enables co-presence of the user with users connected to different directory server types (Fig. 2A) and also of different non-connected server(s) of the same type (e.g. two non connected ILS servers).
• client 21 in the non limiting example of Fig. 2A
• non-connected server(s) of the same type e.g. two non connected ILS servers.
• a preferred non limiting, client based, server independent, chat room file format is now described for a client generated chat room in the INTERNET as described above.
• a link (a pointer) to a chat-room is an URL in the following format: "gold://hostname/path.”
• the link has the format of a standard INTERNET HTTP URL, and can be accessed using the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP protocol).
• HTTP protocol Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
• a link to a chat room file can also have the form of a normal HTTP file pointer such as "http://hostname/path.”
• the retrieved chat room file will have a mime-type of text/html. It is also possible to use specific fields in the HTTP protocol to define this page as a gold page.
• chat room specific parameters syntax is defined such that it can seamlessly be included as part of a standard HTML page which can contain the
• the chat room syntax is using standard HTML tags with values of the different parameters and properties of the chat-room.
• the properties of the chat room can be defined as follows:
• ROOM- 'room name Specifies the room name on the above server.
• the value is defined as a Regular Expression.
• the filtering is activated on the lists of users supplied by the above server and is operated on specific fields of the list according to the different tags and the corresponding values.
• PRIVATE 0
• 1 Specifies if the room is private or public (displayed in rooms' lists or not) ICON URL of image
• LOCATION "URL" Any parameters in the previous page can be overriden by the parameters of the next file. New parameters are added to the chat room parameters. This is used mainly to reference a new server list that can be modified in a central location to enable frequent updates.
• PRIVATE may repeat themselves as many times as required for the sake of supporting different networks of servers of different types.
• the syntax can be recognized. However, if the browser being used does not recognize the chat room syntax, an alternative message will be displayed.
• the message could be any standard HTML message such as an Icon allowing the user to download the chat room application.
• This HTML page can contain PICS information that specifies the 'rating' of the page and any other standard HTML elements.
• FIGs. 4A - 4D illustrate four different non limiting examples of client generated server independent chat rooms of the present invention.
• Example A (Fig. 4A)
• the method of generating and utilizing the chat room of Fig. 4A includes the following steps:
• the method of generating and utilizing the chat room of Fig. 4B includes the following steps:
• Chat Room file GOLD_NAME field 5. Retrieve chat room icon pointed by URL in ICON field from
• INTERNET server 58 and display it in joined chat room list as the chat room icon; 6. Retrieve HTML file 54 pointed by URL in SRC field from INTERNET server 58 and display as the chat room content; 7. Connect to ILS server in the SERVERS field;
• the method of generating and utilizing the chat room of Fig. 4C includes the following steps: 1. Activate Chat Room URL by clicking on the 'Music' 61 image in
• This example demonstrates the use of both an IRC network and an ILS server to create a virtual 'Music' room which includes users from both IRC and ILS:
• the method of generating and utilizing the chat room of Fig. 4D includes the following steps:
• Chat Room file GOLD_NAME field 5. Retrieve chat room icon pointed by URL in ICON field from
• INTERNET 75 server and display it in joined chat room list as the chat room icon; 6. retrieve HTML file pointed by URL in SRC field from INTERNET 75 server and display as the chat room content 76;
• IRC users format to a uniform user format 10. Get the users 81 from the ILS server 79 and translate ILS users format to a uniform user format; 11. Remove duplicate users and display users from both servers in the chat room users list;

Landscapes

• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Computer Networks & Wireless Communication (AREA)
• Signal Processing (AREA)
• General Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Multimedia (AREA)
• Information Transfer Between Computers (AREA)

Applications Claiming Priority (3)

Publications (2)

Family

ID=11070346

Family Applications (1)

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• 1997
  • 1997-07-06 IL IL12124497A patent/IL121244A/xx not_active IP Right Cessation
• 1998
  • 1998-07-06 EP EP98930998A patent/EP0941509A4/de not_active Withdrawn
  • 1998-07-06 WO PCT/IL1998/000313 patent/WO1999003034A1/en not_active Application Discontinuation
  • 1998-07-06 AU AU81263/98A patent/AU8126398A/en not_active Abandoned

Patent Citations (1)

Non-Patent Citations (3)

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