Enhanced encapsulation mechanism using GRE protocol

• US 20050089046A1
• Filed: 08/13/2004
• Published: 04/28/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 08/15/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Nortel Networks Limited (Nortel Networks Corporation)
• Inventors: Muhanna, Ahmad, El-Beik, Essam, Keith, Kory, Moussa, Hachem, Serrano, Ricardo
• Granted Patent: US 7,496,104 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/395.520
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/145 Payments according to the detected use or quantity
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/14 Charging , metering or billing arrangements for data wireline or wireless communications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1425 involving dedicated fields in the data packet for billing purposes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/04 Protocols for data compression, e.g. ROHC
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/16 Implementation or adaptation of Internet protocol [IP], of transmission control protocol [TCP] or of user datagram protocol [UDP]
• 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: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2215/32 Involving wireless systems
• 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 4/24 Accounting or billing

Abstract

The methods of the present invention enable wireless gateway nodes to support mobile node services, such as content based billing, when a data treatment server is present in the system. Using one of a defined Content Flow Label (CFL), an Application Program Interface (API), and a compression protocol header, the present invention provides content based billing by exchanging content and byte count information with the data treatment server. In one embodiment, a new compression protocol header type is defined. In a second embodiment, a content flow label with a byte count field is inserted in a Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) header. In an alternate embodiment, the wireless gateway node implements an API to transfer the content flow label and byte count information over a signaling link. In yet another embodiment, the data treatment server performs the content based billing and similar mobile node services.

Claims

1. A method in a wireless gateway node for providing services in a wireless network, the method comprising:

receiving at least one data packet from a mobile node, wherein the at least one data packet has a standard IP header containing a treated payload;

creating at least one encapsulated data packet by adding a compression protocol header to the standard IP header;

routing the at least one encapsulated data packet to a data treatment server, wherein the data treatment server converts the treated payload to an untreated payload;

receiving the at least one encapsulated data packet from the data treatment server that contains the untreated payload, wherein the compression protocol header contains at least one field indicating a number of bytes in the transmitted treated payload;

removing the compression protocol header from the at least one encapsulated data packet and routing the at least one data packet to a data packet network; and

providing services based on the content of the untreated payload and the number of bytes in the transmitted treated payload;

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the services include at least one of content based billing, pre-paid wireless, and content based routing.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the at least one data packet is encapsulated using Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE).

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the wireless network comprises at least one of a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the data treatment server comprises at least one of a Traffic Protocol Optimizer (TPO) and a load balancer.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the compression protocol header comprises at least one of:

a type field;

a reserved field;

a sub-type field defining the direction of data flow as either ingress or egress;

a version field;

a billing ID length field defining the length of a billing ID field;

a length field defining the number of bytes used in the billing ID fields and byte count fields;

at least one billing ID field defining an accounting ID used for network services that is based on the content of the data packet;

a byte count field for each billing ID field defining the number of bytes transmitted; and

a padding field of variable length to set the compression protocol header length to an even multiple of four bytes.

7. A method in a wireless gateway node for providing services in a wireless data packet network, the method comprising:

receiving at least one data packet having a standard IP header and an untreated payload;

inspecting and classifying the data packet untreated payload for content;

creating at least one encapsulated data packet by adding a compression protocol header to the standard IP header;

routing the at least one encapsulated data packet to a data treatment server, wherein the data treatment server converts the untreated payload to a treated payload;

receiving the encapsulated data packet from the data treatment server that contains the treated payload, wherein the compression protocol header contains at least one field corresponding to the number of bytes in the treated payload;

removing the compression protocol header from the at least one encapsulated data packet and transmitting the at least one data packet with the treated payload to the mobile node; and

providing services based on the inspected and classified content of the untreated payload and the number of bytes in the transmitted treated payload.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the services include at least one of content based billing, pre-paid wireless, and content based routing.

9. The method of claim 7 wherein the data packet is encapsulated using Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE).

10. The method of claim 7 wherein the wireless network comprises at least one of a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network.

11. The method of claim 7 wherein the data treatment server comprises at least one of a Traffic Protocol Optimizer (TPO) and a load balancer.

12. The method of claim 7 wherein the compression protocol header comprises at least one of:

a type field;

a reserved field;

a sub-type field defining the direction of data flow as either ingress or egress;

a version field;

a billing ID length field defining the length of a billing ID field;

a length field defining the number of bytes used in the billing ID fields and byte count fields;

at least one billing ID field defining an accounting ID used for network services that is based on the content of the data packet;

a byte count field for each billing ID field defining the number of bytes transmitted; and

a padding field of variable length to set the header length to an even multiple of four bytes.

13. A method in a data treatment server for providing services in a communications network, the method comprising:

receiving at least one encapsulated data packet having a standard IP header and an untreated payload;

inspecting and classifying for content the at least one encapsulated data packet untreated payload;

treating the at least one encapsulated data packet untreated payload to produce a treated payload;

forwarding the at least one encapsulated treated data packet including the treated payload to a wireless gateway node for transmission to a wireless node; and

providing services based on the inspected and classified content of the untreated payload and the number of bytes in the treated payload.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein the data treatment server comprises one of:

a Traffic Protocol Optimizer (TPO) and a load balancer.

15. The method of claim 13 wherein the services include at least one of content based billing, pre-paid wireless, and content based routing.

16. The method of claim 13 wherein the data packet is encapsulated using Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE).

17. The method of claim 13 wherein the communications network comprises at least one of a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network.

18. The method of claim 13 wherein the treating the at least one encapsulated data packet payload comprises one of:

optimizing the payload and compressing the payload.

24. The method of claim 13 wherein treating the at least one encapsulated data packet payload comprises at least one of:

optimizing the payload and compressing the payload.

19. A method in a data treatment server for providing services in a communications network, the method comprising:

receiving at least one encapsulated data packet having a standard IP header and a treated payload;

inspecting and classifying the at least one encapsulated data packet treated payload for content and a number of bytes in the transmitted treated payload;

untreating the at least one encapsulated data packet payload to produce an untreated payload;

forwarding the at least one encapsulated data packet that includes the untreated payload to a wireless gateway node for routing to the data packet network; and

providing services based on the inspected and classified content of the untreated payload and the number of bytes in the treated payload.

20. The method of claim 19 wherein the data treatment server comprises one of a Traffic Protocol Optimizer (TPO) and a load balancer.

21. The method of claim 20 wherein the services include at least one of content based billing, pre-paid wireless, and content based routing.

22. The method of claim 20 wherein the data packet is encapsulated using Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE).

23. The method of claim 20 wherein the communications network comprises at least one of a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network.