Dynamic reconfigurable client side beaconing

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9762658-B2
Application number	US-201414503597-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 1, 2014
Priority date	Oct 1, 2014
Publication date	Sep 12, 2017
Grant date	Sep 12, 2017

Abstract

Some embodiments provide a monitoring system for a distributed platform. The monitoring system dynamically controls the monitoring and reporting function of client applications running on user devices using a plurality of configurations. The system distributes different configurations to different client applications to control the monitoring and reporting of each client application independently. The system distributes different configurations to the same client application at different times in order to dynamically reconfigure the reporting function of that client application. The system compiles metrics from the client applications in order to generate custom performance reports for different content providers and identify performance issues. In response to a detected issue, the system can automatically reconfigure affected client applications to better diagnose the issue with increased reporting. The system can also issue alerts for others to take corrective action. The system can also self-heal by commanding operation of the affected client applications.

First claim

We claim:

1. A configurable client-beacon monitoring system comprising:
a plurality of client applications running on a plurality of user devices;
a plurality of content distribution servers (i) serving a plurality of content to the plurality of client applications in a distributed manner, (ii) configuring reporting metrics, granularity, verbosity, and frequency of the plurality of client applications, and (iii) receiving different sets of metrics with different reporting granularity, verbosity, and frequency from the plurality of client applications in response to said configuring,
wherein said configuring comprises serving a first configuration to a first set of the plurality of client applications receiving first content of a first content provider and serving a second configuration to a second set of the plurality of client applications receiving second content of a second content provider,
wherein serving the first configuration comprises configuring a first time-to-live (TTL) parameter and at least one of the granularity, verbosity, and frequency with which the first set of client applications monitor and report a first set of the different sets of metrics relevant to delivery of the first content provider content until expiration of said first TTL parameter, and
wherein serving the second configuration comprises configuring a second TTL parameter and at least one of the granularity, verbosity, and frequency with which the second set of client applications monitor and report a different second set of the different sets of metrics relevant to delivery of the second content provider content until expiration of said second TTL parameter;

a big data platform compiling the different sets of metrics from the plurality of content distribution servers, generating a first content provider performance report based on the first set of metrics relevant to delivery of the first content provider content, and generating a second content provider performance report based on the second set of metrics relevant to delivery of the second content provider content.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the big data platform further detects an issue in the different sets of metrics that affects a subset of the plurality of client applications.

3. The system of claim 2 , wherein the big data platform further adjusts any of the reporting granularity, verbosity, and frequency of the subset of client applications by distributing an override third configuration through the plurality of content distribution servers to each client application of the subset of client applications.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the first set of client applications monitor and report the first set of metrics to the plurality of content distribution servers according to the first configuration and the second set of client applications monitor and report the second set of metrics to the plurality of content distribution servers according to the second configuration.

5. The system of claim 1 further comprising a plurality of geographically distributed Points-of-Presence (PoPs), each PoP of the plurality of PoPs comprising at least two of the plurality of content distribution servers.

6. A method comprising:
providing a first configuration to a plurality of client applications, wherein said providing comprises passing a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) with a first set of query string arguments defining granularity, verbosity, and frequency with which each particular client application of the plurality of client applications measures and reports a first set of metrics related to content that is delivered to that particular client application;
receiving the first set of metrics from each of the plurality of client applications;
detecting an anomaly adversely affecting delivery of said content based on the first set of metrics received from a subset of the plurality of client applications;
distributing an override second configuration to each client application of the subset of client applications as a result of detecting said anomaly adversely affecting delivery of said content, wherein said distributing comprises passing a different second set of query string arguments reconfiguring each particular client application of the subset of client applications by changing monitoring and reporting from the first set of metrics to a different second set of metrics related to the content that is delivered to that particular client application and by increasing one or more of granularity, verbosity, and frequency with which each particular client application of the subset of client applications measures and reports the second set of metrics;
receiving the second set of metrics instead of the first set of metrics from the subset of client applications with an increase to said one or more of the granularity, verbosity, and frequency defined by the override second configuration while continuing to receive the first set of metrics from other client applications of the plurality of client applications with original granularity, verbosity, and frequency defined by the first configuration; and
reverting reporting operation of the subset of client applications to the first configuration in response to resolution of the anomaly adversely affecting delivery of said content.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the second set of metrics comprises a new metric not reported within the first set of metrics.

8. The method of claim 6 further comprising generating an alert in response to detecting said anomaly and notifying at least one content provider whose content is delivered to any of the subset of client applications with said alert.

9. The method of claim 6 further comprising passing content of a first content provider to each of the plurality of client applications.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein detecting the anomaly comprises identifying that performance identified in the first set of metrics received from the subset of client applications is below a threshold set by the first content provider and that performance identified in the first set of metrics received from other client applications of the plurality of client applications exceeds the threshold.

11. The method of claim 6 , wherein the override second configuration comprises a set of commands changing the content that is downloaded by the subset of client applications.

12. The method of claim 6 further comprising decreasing at least one of the reporting granularity, verbosity, and frequency of at least one client application of the plurality of client applications not in the subset of client applications while diagnosing the anomaly.

13. The method of claim 6 , wherein receiving the first set of metrics from a particular client application comprises receiving a URL with a plurality of query string arguments, the plurality of query string arguments encoding the first set of metrics.

14. A configurable client-beacon monitoring system comprising:
a plurality of geographically distributed Points-of-Presence (PoPs) distributing first content provider content to a first user device and second content provider content to a second user device, wherein each PoP of the plurality of PoPs comprises at least one content distribution server, the content distribution server comprising a cache for storing content provider content and a network interface for communicating with any of a plurality of user devices;
a monitoring and configuration server comprising at least one processor, the monitoring and configuration server:
configuring monitoring and reporting function of the first user device by leveraging the plurality of PoPs to pass a first configurati

Assignees

• Verizon Digital Media Services Inc

Inventors

• Batla Hani
• Middleton Ted
• Au Dennis

Classifications

• H04L67/125

  involving control of end-device applications over a network · CPC title

• H04L41/0813

  characterised by the conditions triggering a change of settings · CPC title

• H04L67/22

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L67/306

  User profiles · CPC title

• H04L67/02

  based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP] · CPC title