Patent ID: 8732810

Claim:
A method comprising: establishing a packet connection with a mobile station using a secure protocol over a mobile communication network; receiving, from the mobile station, a request via the secure protocol packet connection, the request including authentication credentials of the mobile station to be registered for real- time or near real-time data transfer; responsive to the request, sending to the mobile station, via the secure protocol packet connection, an acknowledgment message including a data transfer encoding type set to a chunked mode, thereby establishing the secure protocol packet connection as a persistent connection with the mobile station; responsive to the request, sending to the mobile station a response message indicating whether or not the authentication credentials of the mobile station are successfully validated; and after the successful validation of the authentication credentials of the mobile station, (1) sending real-time or near real-time data, as a chunked message, over the persistent connection; and (2) sending a heartbeat message to the mobile station or receiving a heartbeat message from the mobile station, over the persistent connection, to determine whether the persistent connection is alive and available for transfer of the real-time or near real-time data in order to maintain the persistent connection.