`Service-Oriented Research Opportunities in the World
`of Appliances
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`
`
`Vijay Machiraju, Martin Griss, Klaus Wurster,
`Reed Letsinger, Akhil Sahai, Aad van Moorsel
`
`HP Labs
`Software Technology Lab
`Palo Alto, California, USA
`aad@hpl.hp.com
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`Zynga Ex. 1017, p. 1
`Zynga v. IGT
`IPR2022-00368
`
`

`

`
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`1 Introduction
`
`There is a rapid growth in the number of ways that appliances are being put to use. New and novel services
`are being created, personalized, and then delivered by exploiting e-services and appliances. Appliances are
`being used not only as service clients but also as interfaces to personal agents that help users make better
`decisions. On the other end, technologies such as Bluetooth are enabling appliances to communicate over
`adhoc networks and to act as service providers for a new class of services.
`Building, deploying, and using such services requires interplay between a number of technologies – service
`composition, registration, brokers, discovery, introspection, binding, agents, wired and wireless protocols,
`personalization, and context-awareness to name a few. Emerging high-level middleware platforms such as
`the XML stack in HP Netaction/Bluestone [1], Biztalk in .NET [2], and place managers in CoolTown [3] are
`aimed at providing some of these features.
`While the addition of appliances brings a whole new class of services into place, the problem of managing
`these appliances and end-to-end services becomes more challenging. For example, service providers of
`these new services will be faced with the problem of having to manage a very heterogeneous environment
`consisting of multiple networks, protocols, and devices. Users of appliances will need additional utilities such
`a profile management, global login, and security.
`This document is a collection of thoughts, interesting technical problems, and opportunities for service-
`oriented research in the world of appliances. Services in this world could mean (Figure 1):
`(a) Network and
`Infrastructure services
`that would enable
`the creation, deployment, operation,
`management, optimization, and evolution of business services. These are horizontal services that would
`cut across and would be used in multiple domains.
`(b) Vertical business services (domain-specific) that are built for specific markets.
`This document focuses on two very broad areas of research:
`1. What are the new types of business services that are enabled by appliances, or by a combination of
`appliances and other existing technologies such as e-services?
`2. What are the network and infrastructure services that would enable the creation, deployment, operation,
`management, optimization, and evolution of such business services?
`The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Sections 2 and 3 provide some groundwork to get to a
`common understanding on appliances, their trends, usage scenarios, and characteristics. Sections 4 and 5
`discuss opportunities for research in the two areas listed above.
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`Zynga Ex. 1017, p. 2
`Zynga v. IGT
`IPR2022-00368
`
`

`

`
`
`Appliances
`
`E-services
`
`Appliance
`e-services
`
`Travel and Transportation
`Games
`Entertainment, News
`Instant Messaging
`Polling, Voting
`
`Trading, Tracking
`Ticketing
`Printing-related Services
`Digital Media Services
`Swatch Services
`
`Services that exploit Data
`sharing, Smooth switching and
`Integration between appliances
`
`Combinations of Bluetooth,
`CoolTown, E-speak, Chai, etc.
`
`Infrastructure
`Services
`
`Location Tracking
`Place Managers
`Global sign-on
`Migration, Roaming,
`Consistency
`-of data
`-of services
`-of service providers
`
`Profile Management
`Personal Agents
`Service Agents
`Natural Language
`Content Transformation
`Multi-modal Data
`Peer-2-peer appliance
`communication.
`
`Conversation Continuity
`Transaction Management
`QoS
`Performance, Availability
`Fraud-detection, Auditing
`Security, Trust
`Self-healing management
`Portals
`
`Payment
`Billing
`Brokering
`Registration
`Discovery
`Introspection
`Composition
`Personalization
`
`Network
`Services
`
`Mobile Access
`-GSM
`-GPRS
`-UMTS
`-CDMA
`
`Network QoS
`Compression
`Universal Access
`Intelligent Networks
`Protocol Transparence
`
`Network Monitoring
`Topology
`Connectivity
`Admittance
`Performance
`Security
`
`IP / IT
`-Switched
`-Routed
`-Wireless Campus
`LAN
`
`
`
`Figure 1. Appliances and Services
`
`2 Appliance Scenarios
`
`This section provides some scenarios that demonstrate how appliances are being used or are anticipated to
`be used. Understanding these scenarios would help in the rest of the discussion.
`1. Personal utility: Appliances such as the earlier versions of Palm® and notebook computers have
`personal utilities such as address and phone book, notepad, etc for assisting users in managing their
`day to day activities.
`2. Thin service client: This is a popular way that appliances such as cell-phones and Palm handhelds are
`being used today. They act as simple browsers that connect to special services on the Internet. For
`example, many cellular service providers offer (or contract other service providers to offer) stock trading
`or banking services to their customers. In all these cases, the appliance displays a simple browser (a
`general purpose software) or a special-purpose user interface to provide access to the service’s
`functionality. In other cases (e.g., games), the appliance may download special-purpose software from
`the Internet.
`Interface to personal agent: It is anticipated that the world in the future will comprise of a sea of agents
`– some of which collaborate to provide services (e-commerce agents), and others which act on behalf of
`end users (personal agents). These agents communicate with other agents and with existing resources
`on the Internet to accomplish their tasks (Figure 2). For example a personal agent may help the user in
`selecting the best service by discovering and negotiating with a broker agent. Similarly, a personal agent
`may interact with the shopping mall agents and with the store agents (in a shopping scenario) to provide
`the best options and deals to the end user. In all these cases, where pervasive access to the personal
`agent is required, an appliance acts as the interface to the personal agent. This scenario is not very
`different from the “thin service client” scenario above from the appliance’s perspective. But, it stresses
`the new class of services that could be offered when appliances are combined with agents and services.
`
`3.
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`Zynga Ex. 1017, p. 3
`Zynga v. IGT
`IPR2022-00368
`
`

`

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`company
`
`supplier
`
`reseller
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`xml
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`
`broker
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`invoice
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`xml
`order
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`xml
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`query
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`quote
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`xml
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`supplier
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`supplier
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`user
`agent
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`resource
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`reseller
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`
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`Figure 2. E-commerce agents, personal agents, and users interact with each other.
`
`4. Embedded web server, identifiable: Some of the appliances (including those that are fixed) may host
`embedded software such as a web server. In other cases, these appliances may just provide a unique
`URL (either using a barcode mechanism or by squirting) to another appliance, which can then be used
`to connect to a web server located elsewhere. In the simplest case, this enables web pages to be
`served by the appliance. These web pages could provide basic information about the appliance or even
`expose some configuration interfaces. In the more advanced case, the web server could host complex
`objects or agents (e.g., Chai Web Server), thus allowing appliances to download new features or to
`support complex conversational interfaces.
`5. Network of appliances: Appliances can communicate with each other. For example, a handheld can
`beam a document to be printed to a printer. An appliance may use a cellular link to download the profile
`of its user. In all these cases, appliances exploit the network to provide a new service to their users. In
`other cases, appliances communicating on a network may offer a new class of services to other
`customers thereby bringing new sources of revenue for the appliance users. For example, appliances
`on a adhoc network can exploit each others’ unused resources (memory, CPU, connections) etc to
`perform a better job at what they do. An appliance downloading a huge movie on a cellular link could
`take a long time to finish the job. But, if the same appliance could exploit the cellular connections of the
`proximate appliances, it could easily speed up the download process. The fast adhoc network could
`then be exploited to bring all the pieces of the downloaded movie into one appliance. In examples such
`as these, there should be payment mechanisms between the borrowers of the appliance resources and
`the providers of such resources.
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`Zynga Ex. 1017, p. 4
`Zynga v. IGT
`IPR2022-00368
`
`

`

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`•=
`
`3 Characteristics of Appliances
`•= Heterogeneity: Appliances have widely varied capabilities and configurations. Differences exist in
`terms of appliances’ form factors, functionality, mobility, user interface capabilities, connectivity, and
`protocols used. Further, a device’s capabilities are subject to frequent change, yielding frequent change
`in interfaces and communication protocols.
`•= Special purpose vs. generic: Most of the appliances are made to be special purpose (e.g., toasters,
`cell phones, etc). Some of them are intended to be general-purpose clients (e.g., handheld browsers).
`•= Large number: A feature that makes appliances so different is that there could be so many of them in
`use. If we consider the number of special purpose appliances and those that are mobile, we can imagine
`how many of these there could be.
`•= Mobility: Some of the appliances are mobile with the user (e.g., watches, handhelds, etc.). Some of
`them may be mobile in other ways (e.g., with the user’s car).
`Intermittent connectivity: Some of the appliances (e.g., PC) are always connected. Others are
`intermittently connected. For example, a handheld may be connected when it is plugged in. The rest of
`the time, it is disconnected. Some of the appliances may have multiple connections. For instance, an
`appliance may have a cellular link, a Bluetooth link, and a traditional IP link. These connections differ
`widely in their characteristics. Cellular links are long-range, low bandwidth, and expensive. Bluetooth
`links are short-range, high bandwidth, and cheap. IP links are medium-range, high bandwidth, and cheap
`as well. Cellular links and IP links are more pervasive than the Bluetooth links.
`•= Adhoc networks: The networks that appliances participate in may be adhoc in nature. Networks are
`dynamically created and broken based on the proximity and locations of devices. The only people who
`can see this network are the users of the appliances. It should be possible to manage these networks
`and applications built on the top of these networks without the need for additional operators, or even
`better, make them self-manageable.
`•= Context dependence: The functionality offered by an appliance may change based on the context in
`which it is used. For example, based on who is using the appliance (user-dependence) the appliance
`may load different profiles. Based on the location in which it is used (location-dependence), the appliance
`may access new services.
`The services that are built around appliances also exhibit unique characteristics:
`•= Heterogeneous networks: In the end-to-end case, the service may have to pass through various
`network infrastructures such as IP-based, telco-based, wireless, and adhoc networks.
`•= Heterogeneous middleware: Components of the service will be implemented on various middleware
`platforms such as Bluestone and .NET for composed e-services and agents, CoolTown for bringing
`context awareness, and appliances for clients.
`Intermittently connected providers and consumers: Because of the intermittent nature of connectivity
`of the appliances, providers and consumers of services may not always be connected to each other.
`•= Context-dependent access, functionality, QoS, and performance: Based on the context (location,
`user, etc), a whole new set of services may be offered. Non-functional characteristics of the service such
`as QoS and performance may also vary widely based on the context.
`•= Security and Access: Providing secure communication and access to services will be even more
`challenging with the large number of appliances, some of which could be mobile. There are various
`issues surrounding authentication, authorization, access control, and trust when appliances are used to
`connect to services.
`
`•=
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`Zynga Ex. 1017, p. 5
`Zynga v. IGT
`IPR2022-00368
`
`

`

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`•= Pervasiveness: Appliances facilitate a pervasive computing infrastructure where consumers can have
`access to information and services from any location. This puts a tremendous burden on how such
`services could be built and how scalable, available, and manageable they should be.
`
`4 Opportunities in New Business Services
`
`Figure 1 showed a number of business services that could be created by using appliances and other e-
`service infrastructures. Some of these are explained below using a characteristic scenario of how such a
`service could be used.
`•= Printing-related Services: Carrying documents or references to documents on appliances and printing
`them on a proximate printer in airports and other locations.
`•= Digital-media Services: Pictures in a camera being uploaded to a nearby printer for printing.
`•= Games: Service providers offering multi-user games on appliances.
`•= Shopping: A combination of personal agents (representing the user) and service agents (from the mall
`and shops) presenting a unique shopping experience to the user through his or her appliance.
`•= Smooth move-over between appliances
`•= Appliance striping: Users using unused resources (CPU, memory, connections) on each others’
`appliances.
`5 Opportunities in Infrastructure Services
`
`These are services that could be considered to be part of the infrastructure. Their role is to facilitate the
`development, deployment, operation, and management of the business services. For the new world of
`services, it is important to stress that the dynamic "run-rime" or "provisioning time" binding and
`customization of components will change the nature and role of management, and the pace of evolution of
`components and composed systems. Traditional management aspects such as monitoring and control will
`remain in this new world. At the same time, management could take a different form - in the form of services
`– which will make it to be an integrated part of the infrastructure.
`5.1 Development, Deployment, Operation
`•= E-commerce agents and personal agents: Agents will play a big role in enabling the next
`generation of services. A set of agents called e-commerce agents will be good at B-2-B
`conversations and will help in the creation of composite e-services. Another set of agents called
`personal agents will help end users in C-2-B conversations. Users will interact with personal agents
`through appliances [Figure 3].
`•= Messaging: It is hard to imagine a world where all the agents and appliances will have a static set
`of features. One way to make this more dynamic is to add the capability to learn (download) new
`features on demand. One way to accomplish this is to add general-purpose software such as a web
`server to each agent or appliance that is capable of receiving a message (in XML, say). Based on
`the type of message that it receives, the agent or appliance can download new software/features
`that can be used to interpret those messages (e.g., the XML message includes information on the
`DTD and its interpreter). This is similar, but an extension, to the current mechanism of extending
`MIME types supported by a web server/browser by adding new plug-ins.
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`Zynga Ex. 1017, p. 6
`Zynga v. IGT
`IPR2022-00368
`
`

`

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`User
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`E-Services
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`PAs
`
`Internet
`
`Applications
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`cell phone
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`badge pad
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`PDA
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`watch
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`interpret &
`find & filter
`format
`public info
`user
`communication
`PA
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`negotiate for
`services
`
`manage
`personal info
`
`Personal Info
`Repository
`
`
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`Figure 3. Appliances interact with personal agents, which then communicate with e-services and other
`applications.
`
`•= Publish-subscribe communication: To facilitate scalable, decoupled communication that can
`support advertisement, discovery, and usage of services, we need a flexible infrastructure such as
`publish-subscribe/multicast/federation of buses. This will take us a long way in dealing with the large
`number of appliances, the numerous types of messages, and the dynamic nature of these services.
`•= Netaction + CoolTown: While Netaction is good at facilitating the creation and composition of
`services on the Internet, CoolTown is good at adding context-sensitiveness to the information and to
`the service. A combination of these two technologies can deliver powerful context-sensitive services
`and appliances can be used as the means of delivering such services [Figure 4]. For example, a
`CoolTown beacon located at a shop can squirt a URL to a Bluestone service, which can then
`provide information about various products or even an automatic purchasing service. The appliance
`could provide the credit card information to the e-service which then uses a payment e-service for
`authentication.
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`Zynga Ex. 1017, p. 7
`Zynga v. IGT
`IPR2022-00368
`
`

`

`proj
`proj
`
`conf
`print
`print
`conf
`Conference Rooms
`Conference Rooms
`Campus
`
`Kiosks
`
`apl
`com edu
`Kitchen
`
`Enterprises
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`
`
`4
`
`cell phones
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`palm tops
`
`set top boxes
`
`F ro
`
`n
`n ry H a rris o
`v e th a t
`m : H e
`e lie
`a ta
`u b
`b ile d
`u t to
`o
`o y
`o
`o
`b
`th e m
`a rk e t is a
`k e o ff?
`m
`ta
`
`D
`
`information
`appliances
`
`inf
`
`edu
`ent
`Living room
`Home
`
`controllers
`
`gps
`
`ent
`Auto
`Neighborhood
`
`Mobile Devices
`
`Mobile Context Mgrs
`
`Service Provider /
`Integrator
`
`Service
`Providers
`E-service Servers
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`
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`Figure 4. E-services and context managers can be combined to create a new generation of
`personalized/context-sensitive services that can then be delivered through appliances.
`
`•= Bridge gaps between Netaction, CoolTown, wireless, .NET, Bluetooth…: These technologies
`cover ground in various aspects in an end-to-end scenario. Some of these provide middleware
`infrastructures (Bluestone in Netaction). Some of these define protocols for communication or
`document exchange (e.g., XML stack in Netaction, SOAP for .NET). New standards such as UDDI,
`eCo, CBL, emerge every day. Mechanisms for bridging the gaps between these protocols should be
`designed without having to reinvent yet another protocol.
`•= Natural Language
`5.2 Management
`Listed below are a few challenges that arise in terms of managing appliances and services that appliances
`participate in. Management solutions that address some of these challenges could be targeted for the users
`of appliances and/or service providers.
`•=
`Integrated management of the heterogeneous environment: One observation from the
`OpenView efforts is that Telco style management and services and application/service style
`management are being integrated. Providing a uniform interface to the service provider or to the
`user while hiding the heterogeneity in the appliances, networks, and infrastructures is quite
`challenging.
`•= Management-aware appliances and services: One idea that has emerged is that traditional
`OVBU style application and service management changes or is extended to much more "self-
`managing" or “management-ready” components. These components will incorporate or expose
`management interfaces and capabilities, rather than being interfaced to a monolithic management
`system. This built in management can be seen as a service (or service facet) that can be
`dynamically composed with the service facets of other components, and can be used/presented
`through a management service and portal.
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`Zynga Ex. 1017, p. 8
`Zynga v. IGT
`IPR2022-00368
`
`

`

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`•= Tighter integration between management and the service: Management services can now
`become a source of immediate information to developers / maintainers / evolvers. They can be used
`sort of like profilers for compilers or as optimization and brokering utilities to pinpoint and quickly
`change system hot spots, or dynamically tune components or the composition.
`•= Location transparency and visibility: There will be new opportunities for management capabilities
`that help in location related services; some capabilities will enhance and support location-aware
`modalities, while others will work together to conceal location and mobility. For example, as a user
`moves around, the management service component will cache, replicate and relocate some
`elements of the system to maintain QoS, hide transitions across multiple service providers, adjust
`and negotiate tiers of service as different agents and services appear in the same environment.
`Furthermore, the personal agent (or something use the profile) will maintain negotiations, and
`participate in task-prioritized QoS adjustments as the mobile user moves, or periodically connects
`and disconnects.
`Likewise, location-aware capability will find and acquire different services as the mobile user (or the
`users agent) move to new locations, and will need to manage those, the agents and possibly the
`appliances and available resources. Some of these capabilities are already available in
`Telco/mobile environments at a
`lower
`level and even some user
`level services (e.g.,
`rule/role/mobility based forwarding of calls between phones, mobile phones and pagers), but can be
`extended into the higher-level services that can become location aware.
`Some of these are explained in more detail below:
`o Moving data/service along with the user (Follow-me): As the user moves around, the
`server closest to the user should serve the user. There are host of issues involved in user
`management, user data migration etc.
`o Content transformation: Depending on the mobile device resources, the data has to be
`transformed to suit the bandwidth, presentation capabilities, and resources available to the
`user as he/she moves around.
`o Location transparent QoS and performance: The service provider may want to
`guarantee quality of service and performance parameters as a function of various
`parameters such as location, context, and connectivity.
`o Visibility and control on data/service migration: The end user may want visibility and
`control over each of the above characteristics. For example, a user may prefer one server
`to another when presented with a choice.
`o Management of user data: The data the mobile user has, soon becomes stale. There are
`host of issues involved in data consistency. The changes made by the user have to be
`reconciled with the actual data. There has been lot of research in this area (Dr.
`Satyanarayana's work on cache coherency in mobility).
`•= Profile Management: Users need to be able to create and edit their personal profiles. These
`profiles consist of user’s preferences and policies. Users also need to be able to control/restrict
`visibility of information from their profiles to other service providers or agents.
`•= Mobile managers: The managers managing appliances and services could themselves be mobile.
`•= E-2-E availability and performance: The service provider has to guarantee end-to-end availability
`and performance of the service despite the intermittent connections. For example, a user may move
`to a location expecting to be connected to the service. If the user cannot establish the connection
`when he is expected to, the end-to-end service is affected.
`•= Management protocols for dealing with intermittent connections: The device may not be
`connected when it faces a problem. The management system should be able to collect information
`for diagnosis from the appliance when it is eventually connected. Similarly, the management system
`may not be able to fix the problem with the appliance immediately. It may have to wait for the
`
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`
`Zynga Ex. 1017, p. 9
`Zynga v. IGT
`IPR2022-00368
`
`

`

`
`
`appliance to be connected. Another way to deal with intermittent connectivity would be to have a
`distribution of agents for managing the appliance. Some of these agents could be located in places
`where the appliance could come into contact with them. The agents can then collaborate to fix the
`problem.
`•= Transaction management: The user may disconnect willingly or may get abruptly disconnected
`because of lack of bandwidth or battery. There are host of issues regarding rollback, specially so for
`transactions the user was about to commit or the conversations the user was having with a service
`(say, while using voiceXML).
`•= Selection of appropriate channels: To optimize the costs and performance, the user could have
`some control (e.g., policy-driven) on which communication channel is most appropriate for a
`particular task.
`•= Operatorless-management: In the case where appliances enter and break out of adhoc networks,
`there is no operator for performing network or service management tasks. The end users are
`themselves
`responsible
`for
`tasks such as handling
`failures, admittance policies, and
`topology/connectivity management. In such cases, self-healing, adapting appliances and services
`will be of great benefit.
`•= Global sign-on: With all the vast number of appliances and mobility, users would need the facility
`of global signon. Its authentication information has to be verified as and where the user logs in.
`•= Software updates: Appliances should be able to download new versions of software as and when
`them become available or are needed.
`•= Managing personal agents: When appliances act as interfaces to personal agents, users should
`be able to control the behavior of their personal agents through appliances.
`6 References
`
`[1] Netaction and Bluestone. http://www.hp.com/products1/softwareproducts/software/netaction/index.html.
`[2] .NET. http://www.microsoft.com/net/default.asp.
`[3] CoolTown. http://cooltown.hp.com.
`
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`
`Zynga Ex. 1017, p. 10
`Zynga v. IGT
`IPR2022-00368
`
`