Patent ID: 7120665

Claim:
Method for client selection of a virtual device in a system including a server application and a client application, comprising: establishing a wide area network application connection between said client application and said server application; said server application determining if a previously saved list of device names has been saved to a server pool; responsive to finding said saved list in said server pool for said application connection, identifying in said previously saved list of device names a free device name for said application connection; and responsive to said server pool having no free device name, establishing agreement between said server application and said client application to negotiate options; communicating a delimiter separated list of device names from said client application to said server application for a virtual terminal or printer device associated with said client application, said delimiter being a character recognized by said server application and said client application as a delimiter character; said server application saving said list of device names to said server pool for said application connection; said server application examining said delimiter separated list of device names to identify a free device name; and responsive to a device name being available from one of said list and said server pool, communicating acceptance from said server application to said client application.