Patent ID: 8438184
Filing Date: 2013-05-07
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A computer program product comprising a non-transitory machine-readable medium that stores a program, the program being executed by a machine to perform a method of identifying a network-connected entity across multiple device-, usage- and application-domains, the method comprising: maintaining a database comprising entity identities, wherein an entity identity has associated therewith a set of encoded feature data; periodically updating the database by merging into a unique entity identity one or more entity identities that are found to represent a same entity by the following sub-steps: responsive to a request for content, the request having associated therewith usage feature data associated with the network-connected entity; as a result of applying the probabilistic matching function to each of the entity identities in the second subset, determining if the request is recognized as originating from an entity whose entity identity is stored in a database; and if the request is recognized as originating from an entity whose entity identity is stored in the database, using the entity identity to construct a response to the request for content.