JP3751204B2 - System for automatically configuring portable devices - Google Patents

Description

[0001]
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to software applications for mobile users, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for providing automatic configuration of a computer system based on its physical location using electronic means.
[0002]
[Prior art]
By the availability of small, inexpensive and more powerful computer (for example, laptop, etc.), also by the ease of access to the network infrastructure, such as a local area network (LAN) or a telephone connection, a lot of people I started to move with my computer. The set of options for connecting to the network and connecting to the set of resources available to the user is mainly determined by the physical location where the user is currently located.
[0003]
For example, if a user is in a New York office, the user can connect to the office network via a local area network and access all services such as scanners and printers in the New York office. If for some reason a user travels to his branch in Florida with his computer, the user will have access to resources available at the branch in Florida. If a user stays at some hotel or travels through an airport during a business trip, the user may access resources available at the hotel or airport.
[0004]
Typically, hotels use a telephone line to dial into an office network and use a printer available at the hotel. After establishing a network connection, a typical user uses various software applications to access and manage information of interest to him. For example, to send and receive mail, a user uses an email client such as Lotus Notes ™ or Microsoft Outlook ™. In addition, in order to transfer a file between the user's computer and the office server, the user manually copies the file or uses a file transfer application.
[0005]
However, a major problem with current computer system configurations is that whenever a user connects from a different physical location (eg, hotel, airport, etc.), the user must frequently update computer system configuration parameters. . These computer system configuration parameters include telephone numbers for connecting to local service providers, network parameters such as domain name servers, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, printer settings, and the like.
[0006]
This tedious task is that the computer is useless at its physical location because this information must be updated using some software application and because of inconsistencies in updating any configuration information. It becomes more complicated in that point. This is a problem.
[0007]
The problem is exacerbated for certain classes of workers who travel frequently, such as salespeople and insurance diplomats. During weekdays the salesperson will visit several places. At each point, the operator must reconfigure the computer configuration settings. This is very inconvenient for them.
[0008]
Some products (eg, Symantec's Mobile Essentials ™) attempt to provide specific centralized management and deployment of location profiles. Location profiles include generic location information (eg country, city, and time zone), dialing, network settings for transmission control protocol (TCP) / Internet protocol (IP) and dial-up, printer configuration, and web Includes profile settings for other applications such as browsers and email clients. Another product (eg, 3Com's DynamicAccess Mobile Connection Manager ™) supports multiple standard LANs and remote access configurations. It features single click switching between locations and supports read-only locations for troubleshooting and ease of maintenance.
[0009]
However, like the Symantec product, this product is inadequate in automatically configuring a computer system based on its physical location and does not provide such a configuration by electronic means in particular. In fact, the computer configuration is performed based on the location selected by the user.
[0010]
Thus, while it is possible for travelers and the like to connect to their “home” network (eg, an intranet), there are many tasks, troubles, and inconveniences for a user to establish a network connection. That is, in order to establish such a successful network connection and gain access to user data, email, and other network resources, many configurations of the computer must be changed.
[0011]
[Problems to be solved by the invention]
In view of the foregoing and other problems, disadvantages, and disadvantages of conventional systems and methods, an object of the present invention is to provide a method and system that provides automatic configuration of a portable device (eg, a computer) based on its physical location. It is.
[0012]
Another object of the present invention is to receive input from an electronic unit / means such as Caller Identification (ID) or Global Positioning System (GPS) (or cellular positioning system, wireless triangulation, other satellite positioning methods). Based on that, the portable device is configured automatically.
[0013]
[Means for Solving the Problems]
The present invention is a system for automatically configuring a portable device, wherein the electronic unit inputs the portable device's telephone number from which the call originated to the portable device in order to determine the physical location of the portable device A locator module provided in the portable device for receiving input from the electronic unit and determining a physical position of the portable device; and provided in the portable device, the portable device A registry for storing location-specific configuration information of a device, and location-specific configuration information provided in the portable device and corresponding to the physical location determined by the locator module from the registry; Location for configuring the portable device based on the position-specific configuration information. And a Deployment Manager, to provide a system.
[0016]
Thus, the present invention automatically configures a portable device (eg, a laptop computer in the exemplary embodiment) using electronic means based on the determination of its physical location.
[0017]
In the preferred embodiment, a software module called a “locator module” is provided. The locator module uses an electronic unit / means (eg, electronic input device such as GPS, caller ID system) to determine the physical location of the computer. The collected information is provided to the location manager, which uses the information to select a preconfigured location and configure the computer system.
[0018]
The unique novel features of the present invention alleviate the problem of reconfiguring the computer at the new location by automatically configuring the computer system based on its physical location using electronic means.
[0019]
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
FIG. 1 shows a configuration of a system 100 suitable for the present invention. Preferably, the present invention is implemented on a portable device, such as client computer 102. Although the client computer is advantageously implemented by a laptop personal computer (PC), those skilled in the art will have significant advantages with the present invention for other portable devices as a whole when viewing the present invention. You will understand that FIG. 4 below shows a typical form that a client computer can take.
[0020]
The client computer 102 is an operating system such as Windows 95 (trademark), Windows 98 (trademark), Windows NT (trademark), or Linux (trademark), and a modem or cable model for connecting to the Internet / Intranet 104. Have a suitable hardware adapter such as a DSL modem, token ring, or Ethernet.
[0021]
The client 102 is also installed with an appropriate software driver for using the TCP / IP communication protocol via a hardware adapter. In addition, the client computer 102 has all the necessary software applications that the user uses to manage its routine information management tasks. These applications include web browsers, dialers and mail clients. Web browser is realized by Netscape Navigator (trademark) and Microsoft Internet Explorer (trademark), dialer is realized by AT & T Global network dialer, and mail client is Lotus Notes (trademark), Microsoft Outlook (trademark), or Eudora. (Trademark).
[0022]
The user uses the client computer 102 to execute an information management task with a server connected to the Internet / intranet 104. These tasks include sending and receiving e-mail from the mail server 106, retrieving web pages from the web server 108, and sending and receiving data files from the file server 110. These servers are implemented, for example, as an IBM RISC ™ system 6000 computer running the AIX ™ operating system or a PC running Microsoft's Windows NT ™ server operating system.
[0023]
The configuration of the system 100 further includes a dial-up server 112. Dial-up server 112 provides a service that determines the telephone number of the location where the caller is calling. To make this determination, the dial-up server uses a telephone caller identification (ID) service. The dial-up server returns the caller ID to the present invention, which is captured by software. This mechanism requires no additional hardware.
[0024]
The dial-up server 112 is implemented by a computer having an operating system such as Windows NT ™, Linux ™ or Unix ™ and a suitable hardware adapter that receives incoming dial-up calls. The In addition to the client 102, the dial-up server 112 interfaces with the servers 106, 108, and 110 through the Internet / intranet 104.
[0025]
FIG. 2 shows a logical software block diagram of the present invention. This includes four modules: location manager 204, synchronization manager 206, connection manager 208, and locator module 232.
[0026]
Location manager 204 provides a function of managing information of location-specific (location-specific) of the present invention is stored in the registry 210. Registry is a part of the Windows (TM) data structures Windows (TM) operating system holds for all programs, that stores platform specific information. The function of the location manager 204 will be described later.
[0027]
The synchronization manager 206 module functions to send and receive e-mails 222, to synchronize file data 220, and to search and store (eg, store) web pages 226 for offline browsing (scanning search). I will provide a. The mail 222 sub-module provides the ability to search for mail using Lotus Notes (TM), Microsoft Exchange (TM), Internet Messaging Access Protocol (IMAP (TM)), and POP3 (TM) protocols.
[0028]
The connection manager 208 uses the modem 212, the token ring card 214, and the Ethernet card 216 to provide a connection function for establishing a network connection. This also provides a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows the user to initiate synchronization.
[0029]
The locator module 232 provides the function of determining the physical location of the computer using electronic means. The exemplary embodiment shown in FIG. 2 supports several electronic units / means (eg, GPS submodule 234 and caller ID submodule 236). Other electronic units / means that can be used include other satellite positioning systems, cellular positioning units 237 (eg, proximity to cells in a cellular network), and other forms of wireless triangulation units 238.
[0030]
FIG. 3 is a flow control diagram of GetCurrentLocation 300 which is an API of the locator module 232. FIG. 3 shows a flow control diagram of the locator module 232. The locator module 232 exports a single API called GetCurrentLocation to the location manager 204.
[0031]
When location manager 204 is initiated by the user, location manager 204 issues a GetCurrentLocation call to locator module 232 and the method shown in FIG. 3 is performed.
[0032]
Initially, at step 302, the locator module 232 determines whether a communication line (eg, a telephone line) is connected to the client computer 102 modem.
[0033]
If it is determined that the line is connected, the locator module 232 dials a predetermined free telephone number to the dial-up server 112 (step 304). Upon receipt of the call, the dial-up server modem answers the call and extracts and stores the caller's telephone number using the telephone service provider's caller ID mechanism (step 316).
[0034]
Next, at step 306, the client computer 102 sends a request message to the dialup server 112 requesting the telephone number from which the call originated. In step 318, the dial-up server 112 sends a response to the client 102 along with the caller's telephone number.
[0035]
In step 308, the locator module 232 extracts the phone number from the response message, and then in step 310 searches the registry 210 (see, eg, FIG. 2) for the location configuration of the particular phone number.
[0036]
If it is determined in step 312 that a position configuration has been found, the flow proceeds to step 314. In step 314, the name of the position is returned to the location manager 204.
[0037]
If the location is not found at step 312, a “Not Found” result is returned to the location manager 204 (step 320).
[0038]
Further, if it is determined in step 302 that the communication line (eg, telephone line) is not connected to the modem, the locator module 232 determines whether the GPS receiver is connected to the computer 102 (step 322). .
[0039]
If a GPS receiver (or another electronic unit as described above) is connected to the computer 102, at step 324, the locator module 232 retrieves local GPS coordinates from the receiver and uses these coordinates to allow the computer to Determine the city, state and country in which you are located.
[0040]
In step 310, using the aforementioned information (eg, city, state, country, etc.), the locator module 232 searches the registry 210 to determine the location configuration of its physical location.
[0041]
The process proceeds to step 312 to determine if a location configuration has been found. If a position configuration is found, the name of the position is returned to the location manager 204 (step 314) . If the location is not found, the “absent” result is returned to the location manager as described above (step 320).
[0042]
When location manager 204 returns the name of a valid location by locator module 232, location manager 204 uses that information to automate computer system 102 based on configuration information stored for that location. To configure.
[0043]
FIG. 4 illustrates a typical hardware configuration (eg, client portable device) of an information processing / computer system 400 in accordance with the present invention. Computer system 400 preferably includes at least one processor or central processing unit (CPU) 411.
[0044]
The CPU 411 is connected to a random access memory (RAM) 414, a read only memory (ROM) 416, an input / output (I / O) adapter 418 (peripheral components such as the disk unit 421 and the tape drive 440 via the system bus 412. Device to the bus 412), user interface adapter 422 (keyboard 424, mouse 426, speaker 428, microphone 432, and other user interface devices to connect to the bus 412), communication adapter 434 (information processing system Are connected to a data processing network, the Internet, an intranet, etc.) and a display adapter 436 (which connects the bus 412 to the display device 438 and the printer 439).
[0045]
In addition to the hardware / software environment described above, different aspects of the invention include computer-implemented methods that perform the methods described above. For example, this method is implemented in the specific environment described above.
[0046]
Such a method is implemented, for example, by running a computer, which is a digital data processing device, and executing a sequence of machine-readable instructions. These instructions may be present in various types of signal bearing media.
[0047]
Accordingly, the present invention in this aspect is provided as a programmed product, which includes a signal bearing medium having a program of machine readable instructions executed by, for example, a digital data processor to perform the method described above. included.
[0048]
Thus, as shown in FIG. 5, in addition to the hardware and process environment described above, different aspects of the present invention use electronic means (eg, caller ID or GPS) to automatically configure the computer system. Includes computer-implemented methods that provide based on their physical location. As an example, this method is implemented in the specific hardware environment described above.
[0049]
Such a method is realized, for example, by operating the CPU 411 (FIG. 4) and executing a sequence of machine-readable instructions. These instructions may be present in various types of signal bearing media.
[0050]
The signal carrier medium includes, for example, a RAM included in the CPU 411 representing the high-speed access storage device. Alternatively, the instructions may be contained in another signal bearing medium that is directly or indirectly accessible by CPU 411, such as, for example, magnetic data storage diskette 500 (FIG. 5).
[0051]
Whether included on diskette 500, computer / CPU 411, or elsewhere, the instructions may be stored on various machine-readable data storage media. These include DASD storage devices (eg traditional “hard drives” or RAID arrays), magnetic tape, electronic read-only memory (eg ROM, EPROM or EEPROM), optical storage devices (eg CD-ROM, WORM, DVD). , Digital optical tape, etc.), paper punch cards, or other suitable signal bearing media, such as digital and analog communication links and wireless transmission media. In an embodiment of the invention, the machine readable instructions include software object code compiled from a language such as “C”.
[0052]
The unique novel mechanism of the present invention automatically uses the electronic unit (eg, caller ID, GPS, cellular positioning, wireless triangulation, other satellite positioning systems, etc.) to make the computer system based on its physical location With this configuration, the problem of reconfiguring the computer at a new location is reduced.
[0053]
While the invention has been described in connection with a preferred embodiment, those skilled in the art will recognize that the invention can be practiced with modification within the spirit and scope thereof.
[0054]
For example, the exemplary embodiment described above was described in connection with a portable device (eg, a laptop computer), but manufactured by Personal Data Assistant (PDA), Palm Pilot, Cell Phone, Sharp Corporation. Other devices such as MobilonPro can benefit from the features of the present invention.
[Brief description of the drawings]
FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a preferred system configuration according to the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a logical software block diagram in accordance with the present invention.
FIG. 3 is a flow control diagram of the GetCurrentLocation application program interface (API) of the locator module 232;
FIG. 4 illustrates an exemplary information processing / computer system 400 used with the present invention on the client (user) side.
FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a medium 500 storing a program for realizing the method according to the present invention.
[Explanation of symbols]
204 Location Manager 206 Synchronization Manager 208 Connection Manager 210 Registry 212 Modem 214 Token Ring Card 216 Ethernet Card 220 File Data 222 Email 226 Web Page 232 Locator Module 234 GPS Submodule 236 Caller ID Submodule 237 Cellular positioning unit 238 Wireless triangulation unit

Claims (4)

A system for automatically configuring a portable device,
An electronic unit for entering the portable device's telephone number into the portable device to determine the physical location of the portable device;
A locator module provided in the portable device and providing a function for receiving input from the electronic unit and determining a physical position of the portable device;
A registry provided in the portable device for storing location specific configuration information of the portable device;
Location-specific configuration information provided in the portable device and corresponding to the physical location determined by the locator module is retrieved from the registry, and the portable device is configured based on the retrieved location-specific configuration information Including a location manager for the system.   The system of claim 1, wherein the electronic unit includes a telephone caller identification system. The locator module exports an application programming interface GetCurrentLocation the location manager system of claim 1, wherein.   The system of claim 3, wherein the location manager configures the portable device by executing the GetCurrentLocation call.

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