Patent ID: 6999992

Claim:
In a network system including a server system, a client system, and one or more other network devices, wherein the server system monitors the occurrence of events, sends notification data to the client system, when notification has been requested, after one of the monitored events occurs, and may have client data requiring transmission to the client system, a method for efficiently sending notification to the client system when the event has occurred, so as to preserve the processing capacity of the server system and the client system, and so as to preserve bandwidth on the network system, the method comprising: an act of the server system determining that a notification is to be sent to the client system upon the occurrence of one of the monitored events; an act of the server system sending notification data using a connectionless protocol to the client system, if one of the monitored events occurs; an act of determining if the server system has client data to transmit to the client system and upon determining that the server system has client data to transmit, initiating contact with the client device using a connection-oriented protocol when the server system has client data to transmit to the client system; and an act of the server system transmitting the client data to the client system using exclusively the connection-oriented protocol to transmit the client data, after the server system receives contact using the connection-oriented protocol, and without first attempting to transmit the client data to the client using the connectionless protocol.