Brokered service discovery and connection management
AssigneeApple Inc.
InventorsCharles W Duyk, Hien M Nguyen, Huai-Che Lu, Joseph P Saracino, Quang D Tran
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A discovery broker may facilitate discovering and connecting devices, such as a sender device and receiver device, in a dense environment and/or a network with segmentation. The sender and receiver devices may be connected via the discovery broker based on a machine-readable image including connectivity information, digital wallet data including the connectivity information, or a domain name system.
Claims20
One or more tangible, non-transitory, computer-readable media, comprising computer-executable instructions that, when executed by processing circuitry of a discovery broker device, cause the processing circuitry to:
- register a receiver device in response to exchanging, with the receiver device, first connectivity information associated with the receiver device and second connectivity information associated with the discovery broker device;
- receive a first request to communicatively couple with a sender device using digital wallet data comprising the second connectivity information associated with the discovery broker device;
- communicatively couple with the sender device based on the first request comprising the second connectivity information associated with the discovery broker device;
- receive a second request from the sender device to communicatively couple with the receiver device;
- and
- cause transmission of the first connectivity information associated with the receiver device to the sender device in response to receiving the second request and authenticating the sender device based on the second request.
A method to be performed by processing circuitry of a discovery broker device, the method comprising:
- registering a receiver device based on exchanging, with the receiver device, first connectivity information associated with the receiver device and second connectivity information associated with the discovery broker device;
- receiving a first request to communicatively couple with a sender device using digital wallet data comprising the second connectivity information associated with the discovery broker device;
- communicatively coupling with the sender device based on the first request comprising the second connectivity information associated with the discovery broker device;
- receiving a second request from the sender device to communicatively couple with the receiver device;
- and
- sending the first connectivity information associated with the receiver device to the sender device based on receiving the second request and authenticating the sender device.
A discovery broker device comprising:
- a network interface configured to transmit and receive signals between a sender device and a receiver device;
- and
- processing circuitry communicatively coupled to the network interface, the processing circuitry configured to:
- register the receiver device in response to exchanging, with the receiver device, first connectivity information associated with the receiver device and second connectivity information associated with the discovery broker device;
- receive a first request to communicatively couple with the sender device using digital wallet data comprising the second connectivity information associated with the discovery broker device;
- receive a second request from the sender device to communicatively couple with the receiver device;
- and
- cause transmission of the first connectivity information associated with the receiver device to the sender device based on receiving the second request and authenticating the sender device based on the second request.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.