Granted Patent B2

US 8,504,702 · App. 12/955,564 · Granted Aug 6, 2013

Abstract

Claims (27)

1. A networked system comprising:

a first server configured to:

communicate over a local area network;

respond to an HTTP request if sent using a first local server identifier; and

respond to a first set of remote procedure calls (RPCs) but not to a second set of RPCs;

a second server configured to:

respond to said HTTP request if sent using a remote server identifier; and

respond to the first set of RPCs and the second set of RPCs;

a client networked device configured to:

communicate over the local area network;

send a request for a server identifier over the local area network connection using a second local server identifier that comprises a NETBIOS name, or a domain name in a local namespace;

receive a selected server identifier over the local area network connection;

send said HTTP request using the selected server identifier;

send at least one RPC of the first set of RPCs using the selected server identifier; and

send at least one RPC of the second set of RPCs using the selected server identifier; and

a networked device comprising a processor coupled to a memory, the networked device configured to:

receive the request, sent using the second local server identifier, for a server identifier, if the second local server identifier corresponds so an assigned name stored in the networked device;

determine if the second server is available by sending a message using the remote server identifier, wherein the remote server identifier was not received from the client networked device and is not based on the second local server identifier;

select the remote server identifier if the second server is available and select the first local server identifier if the second server is not available; and

send the selected server identifier to the client networked device in response to the request for the server identifier.

2. The networked system of claim 1 , wherein the selected server identifier comprises a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) string.

3. The networked system of claim 1 , wherein the second local server identifier comprises the domain name in the local namespace and said domain name ends with “.local”.

4. The networked system of claim 1 , wherein the networked device comprises the first server.

5. The networked system of claim 1 , wherein

the first server is configured to respond to said HTTP request with a first response; and

the second server is configured to respond to said HTTP request with a second response;

wherein the first response does not include any data received by the first server from the second server.

Assignments (9)