Some embodiments establish for an entity a virtual network over several public clouds of several public cloud providers and/or in several regions. In some embodiments, the virtual network is an overlay network that spans across several public clouds to interconnect one or more private networks (e.g., networks within branches, divisions, departments of the entity or their associated datacenters), mobile users, and SaaS (Software as a Service) provider machines, and other web applications of the entity. The virtual network in some embodiments can be configured to optimize the routing of the entity's data messages to their destinations for best end-to-end performance, reliability and security, while trying to minimize the routing of this traffic through the Internet. Also, the virtual network in some embodiments can be configured to optimize the layer 4 processing of the data message flows passing through the network.

A system and method for deconstructing a document is described herein, where the method is an improvement over existing document deconstruction techniques. These improvements increase speed and accuracy by rapidly identifying the source in a document by splitting the document into a plurality of sections and performing a perceptual image hashing on each section. Then a hamming distance is used to compare the hash for each section with the hashes of known documents to identify the source who sent the document.

A system and method for deconstructing a document is described herein, where the method is an improvement over existing document deconstruction techniques. These improvements increase speed and accuracy by rapidly identifying the vendor in an invoice by splitting the invoice into three regions and performing a perceptual image hashing on each section. Then a hamming distance is used to compare the hash for each section with the hashes of known invoices to identify the vendor who sent the invoice.

A method includes: receiving, by a computing device, a microservice code from a user device; identifying, by the computing device, a service used by the microservice code; identifying, by the computing device, the service in a target cloud platform; generating, by the computing device, a modified microservice code by adding a predefined code template to the microservice code, the predefined code template being associated with the service in the target cloud platform; receiving, by the computing device, user input defining a value of a parameter in the predefined code template in the modified microservice code; and generating, by the computing device, a new deployment file for the target cloud platform based on the modified microservice code.

Presented are methods and systems to universally assess composite utility consumption (1) in which a plurality of real-time and batch sensor readings such as from multiple disparate utility sensor data inputs (3) may be acquired and stored such as into a local device (2) or a central data warehouse (6). A composite utility estimated cost generator (9) can generate missing or uncorrelated data and a collected composite utility data information correlator (11) can correlate the data so it can be applied to determine some type of composite utility cost information. For real-time calculation, a disparate utility rate information accessor (8) can obtain multiple items of disparate rate information and this can use with correlated data to create a composite utility consumption and spend so a user can manage and control utility usage for a home, building, facility, plant, specific equipment, or the like. Cost information, such as a rate of spend or spend amount(s) to date or for a period may be presented to user in a variety of visualizations and reporting formats including specific time usage and spend information, specific time range usage and spend, and “time-of-use” billing information for specific real-time data points. The visualization and reporting may be used to answer a plurality of usage questions along with specific characterizations of utility spend across time of day domains and specific equipment usage domains thus affording more effective utility cost management.

Methods and apparatus for incentivizing device participation within a distributed network. In one exemplary embodiment, devices of a fog network may provide for example, computational, storage, and/or network resources in exchange for fungible tokens. In one such variant, the user contributions are recorded in a blockchain data structure, thereby enabling users to be compensated for their contributions of resources to the network at a later time. Unlike traditional networking techniques which often rely on centralized networks directing and/or commandeering user equipment for network bandwidth, the various aspects of the present disclosure are directed to ensuring that crediting and debiting of participation can be performed at the edge of the network (within the fog) without requiring authentication or trust exchanges. More directly, various aspects of the present disclosure are directed to verification and/or validation of work performed by peer devices.

Embodiments relate to a marketplace for inter-network links between a high-altitude network and a terrestrial data network. An example method may involve a computer-based purchasing agent: (i) determining a demand for inter-network bandwidth between a high-altitude network and a terrestrial data network, (ii) determining one or more offers to provide an inter-network link, wherein the inter-network link provides inter-network bandwidth between the high-altitude network and the terrestrial data network, and wherein each offer is associated with a corresponding client device, (iii) based at least in part on a comparison of: (a) the demand for inter-network bandwidth and (b) the one or more offers to provide an inter-network link, selecting one or more of the offers to provide an inter-network link, and (iv) initiating a process to establish an inter-network link at each client device that corresponds to one of the one or more selected offers.

A mobile digital telecommunication system, a computer-implemented method, and a computer readable medium having stored thereon a computer executable program code for processing of usage detail records (UDRs) is disclosed herein. The mobile digital cellular telecommunication system comprises a network component configured to generate the UDRs, a rating system and a billing system.

Methods, apparatus, and systems for the process-efficient generation of data records for data communications involving groups or aggregates of user equipment (UE), such as IoT devices, are described. In one illustrative example, for each one of a plurality of UEs associated with a group or aggregation identifier (ID), a request which includes data indicative of a network resource usage event of the UE is received and the data are stored in association with the group or aggregation ID. In response to identifying a predetermined condition, the data indicative of the network resource usage events associated with the group or aggregation ID are aggregated, and a request for generating a data record based on the aggregated data is sent to a data function for generating the data record. The generated data record (e.g. a CDR) may be stored for subsequent retrieval for reporting, analysis, network/communications management, or billing.

A communication system includes: an information transmission section that performs information transmission via a communication network; a communication relaying section that relays a communication between a mobile communication terminal and the communication network; and a fee determination section that determines a communication fee for communication via a communication network or a monetary amount of reward for the information transmission, based on a first communication volume related to the information transmission, or on a ratio of the first communication volume to a second communication volume related to the communication relaying.