Packet transmission method and communication system

• US 20030223422A1
• Filed: 05/27/2003
• Published: 12/04/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 05/28/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NTT Docomo Incorporated (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation)
• Original Assignee: NTT Docomo Incorporated Tokyo Japan
• Inventors: Igarashi, Ken, Watanabe, Yugo
• Granted Patent: US 7,349,390 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/390
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1642 Formats specially adapted for sequence numbers
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/02 Buffering or recovering information during reselection ; Modification of the traffic flow during hand-off
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 40/36 due to handover

Abstract

The object is to prevent occurrence of packet loss in Cellular IP and a drop of TCP throughput due to duplication of packets. On the occasion of relaying a packet from correspondent, a relay router multicasts a router advertisement to access routers forming respective cells into which a target mobile terminal might move. The mobile terminal receives the router advertisements from the neighbor access routers, calculates a difference between reception times of the packets from the respective access routers, and specifies a relay router to perform multicasting. Then the mobile terminal transmits delay information of a delay to be added to each path in multicasting by the relay router, to the relay router thus specified. The relay router adds the delay to each path in multicasting on the basis of the delay information.

Claims

1. A packet transmission method adapted for a communication system comprising a mobile terminal, a plurality of access routers, each access router forming a cell and configured to perform radio communication with a mobile terminal located in the cell, and a plurality of relay routers connected to a hierarchical structure above the access routers, said packet transmission method being applied when a packet from a packet source is transmitted from an upper layer in the communication system toward a target mobile terminal, said packet transmission method comprising:

letting the relay router engaged in relaying the packet from the packet source, multicast a router advertisement with said packet to all access routers forming cells into which said target mobile terminal may move;

letting said mobile terminal receive multicast router advertisements from a plurality of neighbor access routers;

letting said mobile terminal calculate a difference between reception times of packets from respective access routers, based on information about reception from the plurality of access routers, and specify a relay router that should perform multicasting;

letting said mobile terminal transmit to said specified relay router a multicast message containing delay information of a delay to be added to each path in the multicasting by the relay router; and

letting said relay router receive the multicast message from the mobile terminal and add the delay to each path in the multicasting on the basis of the delay information.

2. The packet transmission method according to claim 1, wherein said mobile terminal performs such control as to avoid sending a response of an acknowledgment of a received packet, under a predetermined condition, on the basis of timestamp information of the received packet and a sequence number of the packet.

3. The packet transmission method according to claim 1, wherein when said mobile terminal cannot receive the router advertisements simultaneously from a plurality of neighbor access routers, an access router as a sender of a router advertisement that said mobile terminal can receive, transmits a router advertisement that said mobile terminal cannot receive, as a proxy router advertisement to the mobile terminal.

4. A communication system comprising a mobile terminal, a plurality of access routers, each access router forming a cell and configured to perform radio communication with a mobile terminal located in the cell, and a plurality of relay routers connected to a hierarchical structure above the access routers,

wherein each of the relay routers comprises:

multicasting means for, during relaying performed when a packet from a packet source is transmitted from an upper layer in the communication system toward a target mobile terminal, multicasting a router advertisement with said packet to all access routers forming cells into which the target mobile terminal may move; and

delay adding means for receiving a multicast message containing delay information of a delay that the relay router should add to each path in multicasting, from the mobile terminal and adding the delay to each path in the multicasting on the basis of the delay information; and

wherein the mobile terminal comprises;

receiving means for receiving the multicast router advertisements from a plurality of neighbor access routers;

calculating-specifying means for calculating a difference between reception times of packets from respective access routers, based on information about reception from the plurality of access routers, and specifying a relay router that should perform multicasting; and

message transmitting means for transmitting a multicast message containing delay information of a delay that the relay router should add to each path in the multicasting, to the specified relay router.

5. The communication system according to claim 4, wherein the mobile terminal further comprises response avoidance controlling means for performing such control as to avoid sending a response of an acknowledgment of a received packet, under a predetermined condition, on the basis of timestamp information of the received packet and a sequence number of the packet.

6. The communication system according to claim 4, wherein each of the access routers comprises proxy advertisement controlling means for, when the mobile terminal cannot receive the router advertisements simultaneously from a plurality of neighbor access routers including the access router itself thereof but can receive a router advertisement from the access router itself, performing such control as to transmit a router advertisement that the mobile terminal cannot receive, as a proxy router advertisement to the mobile terminal.