System providing faster and more efficient data communication
A system designed for increasing network communication speed for users, while lowering network congestion for content owners and ISPs. The system employs network elements including an acceleration server, clients, agents, and peers, where communication requests generated by applications are intercepted by the client on the same machine. The IP address of the server in the communication request is transmitted to the acceleration server, which provides a list of agents to use for this IP address. The communication request is sent to the agents. One or more of the agents respond with a list of peers that have previously seen some or all of the content which is the response to this request (after checking whether this data is still valid). The client then downloads the data from these peers in parts and in parallel, thereby speeding up the Web transfer, releasing congestion from the Web by fetching the information from multiple sources, and relieving traffic from Web servers by offloading the data transfers from them to nearby peers.
1. A method by a consumer communication device that is not a server device and that comprises a wireless modem for a Radio-Frequency (RF) communication, the method comprising:
repetitively sending, by the communication device to a first server over the Internet, a first message that is indicative of a status or an availability of the communication device;
receiving, by the communication device from the first server via the RF communication using the wireless modem over the Internet, in response to the sending of the first message, a first request;
obtaining, by the communication device, in response to the receiving of the first request, a first data; and
sending, by the communication device to the first server via the RF communication using the wireless modem over the Internet, the obtained first data.
2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the communication device is identified by a Media Access Control (MAC) address or a hostname.
3. The method according to claim 2 , further comprising sending, by the communication device, during, as part of, or in response to, a start-up or power-up of the communication device, a second message to the first server, and wherein the second message comprises an IP address, the MAC address, or the hostname, of the communication device.
4. The method according to claim 3 , for use with a first application that is stored in the communication device and that is associated with a first version number, wherein the second message comprises the first version number.
5. The method according to claim 4 , for use with a second application that is a version of the first application, that is stored in the first server, and that is associated with a second version number, wherein the method further comprising receiving, by the communication device from the first server, in response to the second message, a third message that comprises the second version number.
6. The method according to claim 5 , wherein the method further comprising downloading, by the communication device from the first server over the Internet, in response to the second message, the second application, and installing the second application in the communication device as a replacement for the first application.
7. The method according to claim 1 , for use with a web-page that is stored in a web server and that is identified by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), wherein the first request comprises the URL.
8. The method according to claim 7 , wherein the obtaining comprises:
sending, by the communication device to the web server over the Internet, the URL; and
receiving, by the communication device from the web server over the Internet, the web-page.
9. The method according to claim 8 , wherein the sending of the URL by the communication device to the web server over the Internet comprises sending of a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request that comprises the URL.
10. The method according to claim 7 , wherein the first request comprises a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request that comprises the URL.
11. The method according to claim 7 , wherein the first data comprises the web-page.
12. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising executing, by the communication device, a software application, and wherein the obtaining of the first data is performed as part of the executing of the software application.
13. The method according to claim 12 , wherein the software application comprises a web browser application.
14. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising repetitively receiving, by the communication device from the first server over the Internet, a second message.
15. The method according to claim 14 , wherein the repetitively sending of the first message is in response to the repetitively receiving of the second message.
16. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising establishing a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection between the communication device and the first server.
17. The method according to claim 16 , wherein the receiving of the first request from the first server is over the established connection, or wherein the sending of the first data to the first server is over the established connection.
18. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising determining, by the communication device, that the received first data, is valid.
19. The method according to claim 18 , wherein the determining is based on checking a received HTTP header according to, or based on, IETF RFC 2616.
20. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the first message comprises a ‘keeping alive’ message.
21. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the repetitively sending of the first message comprises periodically sending of the first message.
22. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising executing, by the communication device, a client operating system that is stored in the communication device.
23. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the first data comprises an audio content, a video content, or any combination thereof.
24. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving, by the communication device from the first server over the Internet, in response to the sending of the first message, a second request;
obtaining, by the communication device, in response to the receiving of the second request, a second data; and
sending, by the communication device to the first server over the Internet, the obtained second data.
25. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the communication device communicates with the first server over the Internet based on, or according to, a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) protocol.
26. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the communication device communicates with the first server over the Internet based on, or according to, a UDP, DNS, TCP, FTP, POP3, SMTP, or SQL standard.
27. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the first message is indicative of the communication device being online.
28. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising executing, by the communication device, an email application.
29. A non-transitory computer readable medium containing computer instructions that, when executed by a computer processor, cause the processor to perform the method according to claim 1 .