Patent ID: 7058696

Claim:
A method for providing multi-user file storage comprising the steps of: (a) enabling each user of a pre-subscribed user group of one or more users to operate an arbitrary client node at an arbitrary geographic location to communicate with a remote file server node via a wide area network, (b) enabling each user of the pre-subscribed user group to access the files of the file group via the respective client node in communication with the remote file server node via the wide area network, including permitting, when the pre-subscribed user group includes at least two users, more than one user of the pre-subscribed user group to access the file group at the remote file server node simultaneously, and (c) maintaining the integrity of the files at the remote file server node by controlling each access to each of the files at the remote file server node so that each access to each of the files at the remote file server is performed, if at all, on a respective portion of the respective file as most recently updated at the remote file server node, wherein the respective portion is less than all of the respective file, thereby enabling all native operating system application programming interfaces to operate so that all multi-user applications accessing the files function as if the remote server, which stores the files, and client nodes, at which such multi-user applications execute, were on the same local area network.