Method for optimizing performance in wireless networks

• US 20030043777A1
• Filed: 09/20/2001
• Published: 03/06/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 08/31/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Mavenir Systems Incorporated (Mavenir Group Holdings Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: First Hop Oy (Mavenir Group Holdings Ltd.)
• Inventors: Koponen, Juha, Kalliola, Janne, Kari, Hannu, Mallat, Hannu
• Granted Patent: US 7,177,277 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/349
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1874 Buffer management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1887 Scheduling and prioritising arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/10 Flow control; Congestion control
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/11 Identifying congestion
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/2458 Modification of priorities while in transit
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/25 with rate being modified by the source upon detecting a change of network conditions
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/0284 detecting congestion or overload during communication monitoring arrangements H04L43/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/06 Optimizing the usage of the radio link, e.g. header compression, information sizing , discarding information system modifying transmission characteristic according to link quality by modifying frame length H04L1/0007; dynamic adaptation of the packet size for flow control or congestion control H04L47/365
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/10 Flow control between communication endpoints
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 8/04 Registration at HLR or HSS [Home Subscriber Server]

Abstract

A system and method for optimizing Internet data transmission so that end-user experience is the best possible. The invention has at least one class set for estimating the network load, wherein each class set consists of classes. The method estimates the network load by each class of the class set. The estimation may be based on counting retransmission requests or packet acknowledgements related to class sets. For example, a class set may consist of classes so that there is a class per each cell of the network. Then the method detects which packets cause a lot of retransmission requests and thus a lot of retransmissions. The method can intelligently target its acceleration actions to certain packets. Four new acceleration actions can be used together with the prior art acceleration actions to accelerate the network traffic.

Claims

1. A method for accelerating transmission via a wireless network, said transmission comprising of packets and said wireless network receiving retransmission requests and optional packet acknowledgements from wireless client devices, the method comprising the steps of:

providing at least one class set consisting of at least one class,

estimating the volume of unsuccessful transmission in at least one class of a class set,

comparing the volume to a predefined level, and when the volume exceeds the predefined level,

executing acceleration actions depending on acceleration settings for reducing said volume.

2. The method as defined in claim 1, wherein the volume is estimated by counting retransmission requests.

3. The method as defined in claim 2, wherein said class set comprises a statistical table in which said class of the class set contains data related to the current number of retransmission requests.

4. The method as defined in claim 1, wherein the volume is estimated by counting packets sent and packet acknowledgements.

5. The method as defined in claim 1, wherein said class set comprises a statistical table in which at least one class of the class set contains data related to the current number of packets sent and the current number of packet acknowledgements.

6. The method as defined in claim 1 further comprising the step of executing a certain subset of the acceleration actions depending on acceleration settings.

7. The method as defined in claim 1, wherein said acceleration actions are selected from a group consisting of:

filtering selected packets from at least one transmission stream, so that the quality of the content of the transmission stream is downgraded;

prioritizing packets for transmission by providing priority identifiers determining in which order the wireless network is allowed to discard the packets;

buffering packets by temporarily placing said packets in a buffer before transferring them to the wireless network;

ordering the packets for transmission in a predetermined order;

or a combination thereof.

8. The method as defined in claim 1, wherein said transmission comprises image data;

and wherein said accelerating action comprises filtering by reducing the resolution of said image.

9. The method as defined in claim 1, wherein said transmission comprises image data;

and wherein said accelerating action comprises changing the image format.

10. The method as defined in claim 1, wherein said transmission information comprises image data and wherein said accelerating action comprises transforming a color image to a monochrome or grayscale image.

11. The method as defined in claim 1, wherein said acceleration settings comprise operator settings and other settings, and wherein said operator setting take precedence over said other settings when the volume of unsuccessful transmission exceed a predetermined level.

12. The method as defined in claim 1, wherein said acceleration settings comprise settings selected from a group consisting of user-specific values, group-specific values, and content provider-specific values or a combination thereof.

13. The method as defined in claim 1, wherein the wireless network is a general packet radio services (GPRS) network.

14. The method as defined in claim 1, wherein the wireless network is a universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) network.

15. A system for accelerating transmission via a wireless network, said transmission composed of packets and said wireless network receiving retransmission requests, and packet acknowledgements from wireless client devices, said system comprising:

an accelerating server having software comprising;

at least one class set consisting of at least one class, responsive to measurement or estimates of the volume of unsuccessful transmission in at least one class of said class set;

a comparison module for comparing the volume to a predetermined level, and

an acceleration execution module for executing acceleration actions depending on acceleration settings for reducing the volume when the volume exceeds the predetermined level.

16. The system as defined in claim 15, wherein the volume is estimated by counting retransmission requests.

17. The system as defined in claim 15, wherein said class set comprises a statistical table in which each class of the class set is related to the current number of retransmission requests.

18. The system as defined in claim 15, wherein said volume is estimated by counting packets sent and packet acknowledgements.

19. The system as defined in claim 15, wherein said class set composes a statistical table in which said at least one class of the class set is related to the current number of packets sent, the current number of packet acknowledgements.

20. The system as defined in claim 15, wherein said execution module is further adapted to execute a subset of the acceleration actions depending on the acceleration settings for ensuring user experience.

21. The system as defined in claim 15, wherein said acceleration actions are selected from a group consisting of:

filtering selected packets from at least one transmission stream, so that the quality of the content of the transmission stream is downgraded;

prioritizing packets for transmission by providing priority identifiers determining in which order the wireless network is allowed to discard the packets;

buffering packets by temporarily placing said packets in a buffer before transferring them to the wireless network;

ordering the packets for transmission in a predetermined order;

or a combination thereof.

22. The system as defined in claim 21, wherein said transmission information comprises image data, and wherein said accelerating action comprises filtering by reducing the resolution of said image.

23. The system as defined in claim 21, wherein said transmission comprises image data;

and wherein said accelerating action comprises changing the image format.

24. The system as defined in claim 21, wherein said acceleration settings comprise operator settings and other settings, and wherein said operator setting take precedence over said other settings when the volume of unsuccessful transmission exceed a predetermined level.

25. The system as defined in claim 15, wherein said acceleration settings comprise settings selected from a group consisting of user-specific values, no group-specific values, and content provider-specific values or a combination thereof.

26. The system as defined in claim 15, wherein said acceleration settings comprise settings selected from a group consisting of user-specific values, group-specific values, and content provider-specific values or a combination thereof.

27. The system as defined in claim 15, wherein said accelerating server is coupled to said wireless network, said accelerating server adapted to receive packets from the fixed network and transmit the packets via a radio part to the wireless client devices.

28. The system as defined in claim 15, further adapted to utilize accelerating clients, each accelerating client installed in a wireless client de-vice receiving packets transmitted by the accelerating server.

29. The system as defined in claim 15, further comprising a message interface between the accelerating server and a gateway GPRS support node (GGSN).

30. The system as defined in claim 15, further comprising a message interface between the accelerating server and a serving GPRS support node (SGSN).

31. The system as defined in claim 29, wherein the message interface is based on simple network management protocol (SNMP).

32. The system as defined in claim 15, wherein the wireless network is a general packet radio services (GPRS) network.

33. The system as defined in claim 15, wherein the wireless network is a universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) network.

34. The system as defined in claim 30, wherein the message interface is based on simple network management protocol (SNMP).

35. A method for accelerating transmission via a wireless network, said transmission comprising of packets transmitted via a wireless network to wireless client devices, the method comprising the steps of:

providing at least one class set consisting of at least one class,

estimating the volume of network traffic in at least one class of a class set;

comparing the volume to a predefined level, and when the volume exceeds the predefined level; and

,

executing acceleration actions depending on acceleration settings for reducing said volume.

36. The method as defined in claim 35, wherein said class set comprises a statistical table in which at least one class of the class set contains data related to the network traffic volume of at least a portion of the network.

37. The method as defined in claim 35, wherein said transmission comprises image data;

and wherein said accelerating action comprises filtering by reducing the resolution of said image.

38. The method as defined in claim 35, wherein said transmission information comprises image data and wherein said accelerating action comprises transforming a color image to a monochrome or grayscale image.

39. The method as defined in claim 35, wherein said acceleration actions are selected from a group consisting of:

filtering selected packets from at least one transmission stream, so that the quality of the content of the transmission stream is downgraded;

prioritizing packets for transmission by providing priority identifiers determining in which order the wireless network is allowed to discard the packets;

buffering packets by temporarily placing said packets in a buffer before transferring them to the wireless network;

ordering the packets for transmission in a predetermined order;

or a combination thereof.