Patent ID: 7000019

Claim:
A method of establishing network communication later in time between a first user endpoint entity accessing a resource over a data network and a second user endpoint entity associated with that resource, using a service system that can set up a communication session with an associated transport mechanism allowing the exchange of data across the network between user endpoint entities joined to the session, the method comprising operations that proceed as follows: (a) upon the first user endpoint entity indicating that it wishes to communicate with a second user endpoint entity in the future, the service system generates a session identifier for a future communication session, passes a copy of the identifier over the network to the first endpoint entity and stores the identifier along with context data concerning the future communication session; (b) when the first user endpoint entity subsequently wishes to establish said future communication session, it passes back the session identifier to the service system; and (c) the service system thereupon matches the received identifier with the stored session identifier to retrieve said context data, and joins the first user endpoint entity into a communication session with an appropriate second user endpoint entity as identified using said context data.