DETAILED ACTION
This action is in response to communication filed on 4/29/2025
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 8/15/2025 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1-2, 5-8, 11-14, 17-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Farhangi et al. (US 10,182,033) in view of Karasaridis et al. (US 2020/0195669).
Regarding claim 1, Farhangi discloses a device comprising:
a processor;
a memory storing instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the device to:
analyze statistics related to DNS service operations (Farhangi discloses monitoring the health or resource usage of servers and scale resource appropriately; col. 6/lines 17-47; detx 18; “The server manager 116 may further be configured to monitor the health or resource usage of servers 112 within the pool, such as by monitoring computing resources used by the servers 112, monitoring for critical failures of the servers 112, etc. In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, the server manager 116 may operate to automatically scale the number or configuration of the servers 112 in the pool 114 based, for example, on computing resources used by the servers 112 of the pool 114”);
determine whether to scale up or down based on the analyzed statistics (Farhangi discloses adding more resource when resource threshold is exceeded; col. 6/lines 17-47; detx 18; “the server manager 116 may operate to automatically scale the number or configuration of the servers 112 in the pool 114 based, for example, on computing resources used by the servers 112 of the pool 114. Illustratively, where the average computing resources usage of the servers 112 in the pool 114 exceeds a threshold amount, the server manager 116 may add new servers 112 to the pool to reduce this computing resource usage”);
add or remove service machines to a first-tier DNS service group based on the determination (Farhangi discloses x; col. 6/lines 17-47; detx 18; “where the average computing resources usage of the servers 112 in the pool 114 exceeds a threshold amount, the server manager 116 may add new servers 112 to the pool to reduce this computing resource usage…Further, where the average computing resources usage of the servers 112 in the pool 114 falls under a threshold amount, the server manager 116 may remove servers 112 from the pool to maintain a desired computing resource (and to prevent the need to maintain resources for underutilized servers 112. The addition or reduction of the number of servers 112 in the pool 114 is generally referred to herein as automatic scaling of the pool 114”. The pool of servers is the group of service machines whose size is adjusted. The reference integrates this scaling with the DNS resolution system that advertises the service endpoints. Mapping the pool to a “first-tier DNS service group”. The secondary reference will teach hierarchical DNS architecture).
However, the prior art does not explicitly disclose direct a controller to add or remove a second-tier DNS service group to a point of presence (POP) for a particular fully qualified domain name (FQDN).
direct a controller to add or remove a second-tier DNS service group to a point of presence (POP) for a particular fully qualified domain name (FQDN) (Karasaridis discloses a multi-tiered DNS authoritative server architecture in which a first-tier cluster receives queries and directs them to second-tier clusters, the number of servers per second-tier clusters is varied and differentiation by geographic area (i.e., POP-like location) and domain is provided; [0024] “the present disclosure provides a multi-tiered architecture, or platform of DNS server clusters. In one example, the top tier, or first tier of the platform contains a cluster of one or more DNS authoritative servers to receive and direct DNS queries to one or more DNS authoritative servers in one or more clusters in a second tier of the platform”, [0027] “the number of tiers in the platform may be varied, and the numbers of servers in each cluster of each layer may also be varied. For instance, a second-tier cluster for queries from “good” source devices may have 10 DNS authoritative servers, while a second-tier cluster for queries from “bad” source devices may have only two DNS authoritative servers”, [0041] “the number of tiers in the platform may be varied, and the numbers of servers in each cluster of each layer may also be varied. For instance, a second-tier cluster for queries from “good” source devices may have 10 DNS authoritative servers, while a second-tier cluster for queries from “bad” source devices may have only two DNS authoritative servers”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was effectively filed to combine the prior art with the teaching of Karasaridis. One would have been motivated to improve scalability by applying statistic driven pool scaling of Farhangi to the first-tier and second-tier clusters of Karasaridis. Since Karasaridis varies the numbers of servers per second-tier clusters and differentiates by geographic area, combining the prior art with automatic statistic based additional/removal of entire groups at particular POPs for particular FQDNs is a predictable use of known auto-scaling techniques to achieve the known goal of matching capacity to load. No unexpected results arise.
Regarding claim 2, Farhangi-Karasaridis discloses the device of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the device to:
determine whether to rate limit or blacklist any sources based on the analyzed statistics (Karasardis [0027] “a second-tier cluster for queries from “good” source devices may have 10 DNS authoritative servers, while a second-tier cluster for queries from “bad” source devices may have only two DNS authoritative servers…This may provide reduced bandwidth and other operational costs related to scrubbing centers. In addition, the present disclosure minimizes the possibility of collateral damage and improves resiliency by allowing some flows to go through scrubbers while others can bypass them”); and
rate limit or blacklist an identified source based on the determination (Karasardis [0027] “a second-tier cluster for queries from “good” source devices may have 10 DNS authoritative servers, while a second-tier cluster for queries from “bad” source devices may have only two DNS authoritative servers…This may provide reduced bandwidth and other operational costs related to scrubbing centers. In addition, the present disclosure minimizes the possibility of collateral damage and improves resiliency by allowing some flows to go through scrubbers while others can bypass them”).
Regarding claim 5, Farhangi-Karasaridis discloses the device of claim 1, wherein the processor and the memory are connected to a bus system (Farhangi col. 9/lines 15-43; detx 27; “the server 200 includes a processing unit 204, a network interface 206, a computer readable medium drive 207, an input/output device interface 220, a display 222, and an input device 224, all of which may communicate with one another by way of a communication bus”).
Regarding claim 6, Farhangi-Karasaridis discloses the device of claim 1, further comprising a storage device connected to the bus system (Farhangi col. 9/lines 44-63; detx 28; “memory 210 may include or communicate with one or more auxiliary data stores, such as data store 202, which may correspond to any persistent or substantially persistent data storage, such as a hard drive (HDD), a solid state drive (SDD), network attached storage (NAS), a tape drive, or any combination thereof”).
Regarding claim 17, Farhangi-Karasaridis discloses the system of claim 13, further comprising a network connection for communicating with the first-tier DNS service group and the second-tier DNS service group (Karasaridis [0040] “DNS resolver 182 may, by default, forward unresolved DNS queries to DNS authoritative server cluster 190 (e.g., first tier cluster). In addition, one or more DNS authoritative servers in the first-tier DNS authoritative server cluster 190 may be configured to forward or redirect queries from DNS resolvers (including DNS resolver 182) based upon statuses, or reputation scores of the DNS resolvers to one of the second tier DNS server clusters 191-193. For instance, if DNS resolver 182 has a status of “good,” queries from DNS resolver 182 received at the first-tier DNS authoritative server cluster 190 may be forwarded to the second-tier DNS authoritative server cluster 191 for handling DNS queries for “good” DNS resolvers”).
Regarding claim 18, Farhangi-Karasaridis discloses the system of claim 13, wherein the storage device stores policy mapping tables for the first-tier DNS service group (Farhangi col. 9/lines 44-63; detx 28; “memory 210 may include or communicate with one or more auxiliary data stores, such as data store 202, which may correspond to any persistent or substantially persistent data storage, such as a hard drive (HDD), a solid state drive (SDD), network attached storage (NAS), a tape drive, or any combination thereof”).
Regarding claim 19, Farhangi-Karasaridis discloses the system of claim 13, further comprising input devices and output devices connected to the bus system (Farhangi col. 9/lines 15-43; detx 27; “the server 200 includes a processing unit 204, a network interface 206, a computer readable medium drive 207, an input/output device interface 220, a display 222, and an input device 224, all of which may communicate with one another by way of a communication bus”).
Regarding claim 20, Farhangi-Karasaridis discloses the system of claim 13, wherein the processing unit comprises multiple processing units for parallel processing of DNS service operations (Farhangi col. 6/lines 17-47; detx 18; “The server manager 116 may, for example, be configured to generate servers 112 (e.g., as virtual machine instances) or otherwise load computing devices with the requisite software or configurations needed to operate as part of the pool 114”).
Regarding claim(s) 7-8, 11-12 and 13-14, do(es) not teach or further define over the limitation in claim(s) 1-2, 5-6 and 1-2 respectively. Therefore claim(s) 7-8, 11-12 and 13-14 is/are rejected for the same rationale of rejection as set forth in claim(s) 1-2, 5-6 and 1-2 respectively.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 3-4, 9-10, and 15-16 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
For the reason above, claims 1-20 have been rejected and remain pending.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JIMMY H TRAN whose telephone number is (571)270-5638. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9am-5pm PST.
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JIMMY H TRAN
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2451
/JIMMY H TRAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2451
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