US 2014/0373004 A1 · PUBLIC NETWORK DISTRIBUTION OF SOFTWARE UPDATES

Abstract

Updates for an enterprise's software product are made available to user devices on-line, even when network resources of the enterprise are unavailable. Software update sets and notifications concerning the update sets may be published by an enterprise for consumption by content distribution partners of the enterprise and parties not affiliated with the enterprise. Each abstraction relating to an update, including update notifications and update sets may include a cryptographic signature for later use in authenticating the source of the abstraction. Update notifications also may include information indicative of: available update sets; and network locations at which the update sets can be accessed. Further, an update notification may be configured with a time-to-live (TTL) value indicating a value of time after which the notification expires. TTL values give the enterprise some control over the distribution of update sets by limiting the lifespan of the update notifications corresponding to the update sets.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A method of disseminating to a plurality of user devices an update set for a software product produced by an enterprise, the method comprising:

(A) making the update set available on one or more first network devices;
and
(B) making update notifications available to a plurality of second network devices, at least one of the second network devices not affiliated with the enterprise, each update notification including an identifier of the update set and an identifier of at least one of the one or more first network devices from which the update set can be downloaded.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Public network distribution of software updates

Life of this patent

Public network distribution of software updates

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20