Patent ID: 11863457
Assignee: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC H

Claim 0:
1. A method for time-sensitive data delivery in a distributed computing system having a plurality of servers interconnected by a computer network, the method comprising:
receiving, at multiple servers in the distributed computing system, packets from a source host, the packets individually having:
a header with a first header field containing data representing a delivery time and a second header field containing data representing a network address identifying a virtual machine or container hosted on the multiple servers; and
a payload containing data representing copies of information destined to the identified virtual machines or containers hosted at the multiple servers;

in response to receiving the packets, at the multiple servers hosting the identified virtual machines or containers:
inspecting the data in the header field to identify the delivery time;
performing a comparison of the identified delivery time to a system time at the multiple servers hosting the identified virtual machines or containers;
based on the performed comparison, storing the received packets in a buffer at the multiple servers hosting the identified virtual machines or containers without allowing the received packets to be accessed by the virtual machine or container identified by the network address in the second header field prior to the identified delivery time being expired, thereby preventing the virtual machine or container hosted at a first of the multiple servers hosting the identified virtual machines or containers from accessing the information in the payload of the packets earlier than another virtual machine or container hosted at a second of the multiple servers hosting the identified virtual machines or containers; and
allowing the packets or the payload of the packets to be accessed by the identified virtual machines or containers after expiration of the delivery time, thereby providing time-sensitive data delivery of the copies of the same information in the payload to the identified virtual machines or containers.