Systems and methods for correlating multiple TCP sessions for a video transfer

• US 10,320,916 B2
• Filed: 11/30/2016
• Issued: 06/11/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 10/04/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Inventors: Hsu, Wei-Jen, Panda, Biswaranjan, Iyer, Jayaraman, Bhupalam, Bhaskar, Bhargava, Pranav
• Primary Examiner(s): Strange, Aaron N
• Application Number:
  US15/365,432
• Publication Number:
  US 20170085652A1
• Time in Patent Office: 923 Days
• Field of Search: 370350, 386282, 709227, 709203
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/10 Flow control; Congestion control
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/401 wherein the services involve a main real-time session and one or more additional parallel real-time or time sensitive sessions, e.g. white board sharing or spawning of a subconference
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/61 for supporting one-way streaming services, e.g. Internet radio
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/65 Network streaming protocols, e.g. real-time transport protocol [RTP] or real-time control protocol [RTCP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/14 Session management for real-time applications in data packet communications networks H04L65/1066
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/161 Implementation details of TCP/IP or UDP/IP stack architecture; Specification of modified or new header fields
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/234345 the reformatting operation being performed only on part of the stream, e.g. a region of the image or a time segment
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/64746 Control signals issued by the network directed to the server or the client
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8358 involving watermark protecting executable software by watermarking G06F21/16; image watermarking in general G06T1/0021; watermarks inserted in still images for transmission purposes H04N1/32144; inserting watermarks during video coding H04N19/467
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/76 Television signal recording

Abstract

User equipments can download a video file by instantiating multiple video requests, each request specifying different parts of the video file. If each video request initiates a separate transmission control protocol (TCP) session, which is the case with an hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) partial get request, then a network device in a communications network would be oblivious of contextual information, which indicates that the TCP sessions download different portions of the same video file. This disclosure provides systems and methods for correlating multiple TCP sessions so that a network device in a communications network can be aware of the contextual information.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving, at a gateway in communication with a least one mobile device over a communication network having a wireless network, a first video request over a first transmission control protocol (TCP) session and a second video request over a second TCP session, wherein portions of the first TCP session and the second TCP session are established over the wireless network;

deriving a first identification of a first video file requested by the first video request;

deriving a second identification of a second video file requested by the second video request;

comparing, at the gateway, the first identification of the first video file and the second identification of the second video file in order to determine that the first TCP session and the second TCP session are correlated; and

upon determining a correlation between the first TCP and second TCP sessions by operation of one or more computer processors, adding a single count, to account for the first video request over the first TCP session and the second video request over the second TCP session, to a counter that is configured to maintain a number of distinct selections of the video file.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein deriving the first identification of the first video file includes deriving a first video location identifier of the first video file specified in the first video request, and deriving the second identification of the second video file includes deriving the second video location identifier of the second video file specified in the second video request.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein deriving the first video location identifier of the first video file includes reading a “

Request-URI”

field of the first video request and wherein deriving the second video location identifier of the second video file includes reading a “

Request-URI”

field of the second video request.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein deriving the first identification of the first video file includes deriving a first size of the first video file specified in the first video request and deriving the second identification of the second video file includes deriving a second size of the second video file specified in the second video request.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein deriving the first identification of the first video file includes downloading a predetermined portion of the first video file and deriving the second identification of the second video file includes downloading the same predetermined portion of the second video file.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving metadata of the first video file over the first TCP session.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising, upon determining the correlation between the first TCP and second TCP sessions:

applying, by the gateway, the metadata of the first video file received over the first TCP session to the second TCP session.

8. A gateway comprising:

an interface;

a memory; and

one or more computer processors; and

wherein the gateway is configured to;

communicate with at least one mobile device over a communication network having a wireless network;

receive a first video request over a first transmission control protocol (TCP) session and a second video request over a second TCP session, wherein portions of the first TCP session and the second TCP session are established over the wireless network;

derive a first identification of a first video file requested by the first video request;

derive a second identification of a second video file requested by the second video request;

compare the first identification of the first video file and the second identification of the second video file in order to determine that the first TCP session and the second TCP session are correlated; and

upon determining a correlation between the first TCP and second TCP sessions, add a single count, to account for the first video request over the first TCP session and the second video request over the second TCP session, to a counter that is configured to maintain a number of distinct selections of the video file.

9. The gateway of claim 8, wherein deriving the first identification of the first video file includes deriving a first video location identifier of the first video file specified in the first video request, and deriving the second identification of the second video file includes deriving the second video location identifier of the second video file specified in the second video request.

10. The gateway of claim 9, wherein deriving the first video location identifier of the first video file includes reading a “

Request-URI”

field of the first video request and wherein deriving the second video location identifier of the second video file includes reading a “

Request-URI”

field of the second video request.

11. The gateway of claim 8, wherein deriving the first identification of the first video file includes deriving a first size of the first video file specified in the first video request and deriving the second identification of the second video file includes deriving a second size of the second video file specified in the second video request.

12. The gateway of claim 8, wherein deriving the first identification of the first video file includes downloading a predetermined portion of the first video file and deriving the second identification of the second video file includes downloading the same predetermined portion of the second video file.

13. The gateway of claim 8, wherein the gateway is further configured to:

receive metadata of the first video file over the first TCP session.

14. The gateway of claim 13, wherein the gateway is further configured to, upon determining the correlation between the first TCP and second TCP sessions:

apply the metadata of the first video file received over the first TCP session to the second TCP session.

15. One or more non-transitory media comprising logic that, when executed, causes a gateway to:

communicate with at least one mobile device over a communication network having a wireless network;

receive a first video request over a first transmission control protocol (TCP) session and a second video request over a second TCP session, wherein portions of the first TCP session and the second TCP session are established over the wireless network;

derive a first identification of a first video file requested by the first video request;

derive a second identification of a second video file requested by the second video request;

compare the first identification of the first video file and the second identification of the second video file in order to determine that the first TCP session and the second TCP session are correlated; and

upon determining a correlation between the first TCP and second TCP sessions by operation of one or more computer processors when executing the logic, adding only a single count representing both the first TCP and second TCP sessions to a counter on the gateway, wherein the counter is configured to maintain a number of distinct sessions for the first video file.

16. The one or more non-transitory media of claim 15, wherein deriving the first identification of the first video file includes deriving a first video location identifier of the first video file specified in the first video request, and deriving the second identification of the second video file includes deriving the second video location identifier of the second video file specified in the second video request.

17. The one or more non-transitory media of claim 16, wherein deriving the first video location identifier of the first video file includes reading a “

Request-URI”

field of the first video request and wherein deriving the second video location identifier of the second video file includes reading a “

Request-URI”

field of the second video request.

18. The one or more non-transitory media of claim 15, wherein deriving the first identification of the first video file includes deriving a first size of the first video file specified in the first video request and deriving the second identification of the second video file includes deriving a second size of the second video file specified in the second video request.

19. The one or more non-transitory media of claim 15, wherein deriving the first identification of the first video file includes downloading a predetermined portion of the first video file and deriving the second identification of the second video file includes downloading the same predetermined portion of the second video file.

20. The one or more non-transitory media of claim 15, wherein the logic, when executed, further causes the gateway to:

receive metadata of the first video file over the first TCP session; and

upon determining a correlation between the first TCP and second TCP sessions, apply, by the gateway, the metadata of the first video file received over the first TCP session to the second TCP session.