INTERNET-BASED SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR FAIRLY AND SECURELY ENABLING TIMED-CONSTRAINED COMPETITION USING GLOBALLY TIME-SYCHRONIZED CLIENT SUBSYSTEMS AND INFORMATION SERVERS HAVING MICROSECOND CLIENT-EVENT RESOLUTION

摘要

An improved system and method of fairly and securely enabling timed-constrained competitions over the Internet among millions of competitors while compensating for the variable network communication latencies experienced by client machines used by the competitors. The system employs globally time-synchronized Internet information servers and client machines in order to synchronize the initial display of each invitation to respond (e.g. stock price to buy or sell, query to answer, or problem to solve) on a client machine so each competitor can respond to the invitation at substantially the same time, regardless of his or her location on the planet, or the type of Internet-connection used by his or her client machine. Also, by using globally time-synchronized client machines, each competitor's response is securely time and space stamped at the client machine to ensure that competitor responses are resolved within microsecond accuracy.