Model for enforcing different phases of the End-to-End Negotiation Protocol (E2ENP) aiming QoS support for multi-stream and multimedia applications

• US 20050157660A1
• Filed: 07/21/2004
• Published: 07/21/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 01/23/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nokia Siemens Networks GmbH & Company KG (Nokia Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Nokia Siemens Networks GmbH & Company KG (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Kassler, Andreas, Mandato, Davide, Guenkova-Luy, Teodora
• Granted Patent: US 7,602,723 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/254
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/18 End to end
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/20 Traffic policing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/24 Traffic characterised by specific attributes, e.g. priority or QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/2416 Real-time traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/70 Admission control; Resource allocation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/724 at intermediate nodes, e.g. resource reservation protocol [RSVP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/762 triggered by the network
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/765 triggered by the end-points
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/767 after changing the attachment point, e.g. after hand-off
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/801 Real time traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/805 QOS or priority aware
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/808 User-type aware
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/822 Collecting or measuring resource availability data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/824 Applicable to portable or mobile terminals
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1069 Session establishment or de-establishment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1101 Session protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1104 Session initiation protocol [SIP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/4038 with floor control
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/612 for unicast
• 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 65/80 : Responding to QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/303 : Terminal profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 : User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/24 : Negotiation of communication capabilities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 : in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 : Network security protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/18 : Negotiating wireless communication parameters
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/24 : Negotiating SLA [Service Level Agreement]; Negotiating QoS [Quality of Service]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/08 : Reselecting an access point
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/14 : Reselecting a network or an air interface
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 56/00 : Synchronisation arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/10 : Connection setup
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 8/04 : Registration at HLR or HSS [Home Subscriber Server]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 80/00 : Wireless network protocols or protocol adaptations to wireless operation

Abstract

The underlying invention generally relates to the field of mobile computing in a networking environment with distributed multimedia applications and technologies. More specifically, it is directed to the concept of the End-to-End Negotiation Protocol (E2ENP) phases, which enable a pre-negotiation (802, 804, 805), fast negotiation (806) and a fast, dynamic renegotiation (808) of the end-to-end quality and capabilities for telecommunication sessions (102), for multiple configurations of two or a multiplicity of end peers and/or intermediate components in a consistent, reliable, and incremental way by enabling the mobile users'"'"' applications to efficiently and timely react to QoS violations. In this context, the invention proposes a model for defining user profiles and terminal capability information in such a way that hierarchical QoS contract specifications (1108), e.g. compelling correlations (804) across different sets of QoS contracts (1108) for related media streams (206), can be enforced and used for deriving negotiable information. As a reference implementation of this concept, this invention proposes a novel usage of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP, 910) standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in conjunction with extensions of the Session Description Protocol Next Generation (SDPng, 912) specification based on the Extensible Markup Language (XML) in order to implement concepts of the End-to-End QoS Negotiation Protocol (E2ENP, 908).

Claims

1. A method for exchanging media streams between end peers in a network and for supporting the End-to-End Negotiation Protocol (E2ENP), wherein the end-to-end QoS negotiation comprises the steps of:

pre-negotiating a plurality of QoS contracts, before the stream establishment,

carrying on QoS correlation and time synchronization of multiple streams or of group of streams,

negotiating the use of one of the pre-negotiated QoS contract, before or at the time of stream establishment, and

re-negotiate a QoS contract out of the pre-negotiated contracts, after the detection of a QoS change or violation,

characterized by

the use of the Session Description Protocol Next Generation (SDPng) for defining user profile information to be used as input for the E2ENP.

2. A method according to claim 1,

characterized by

the use of SDPng for defining terminal capability information to be used as input for the E2ENP.

3. A method according to claim 1,

characterized by

a pre-negotiation of resource management policies among different peers.

4. A method according to claim 1,

characterized by

a concept of spare contracts, and the concept of state block or unblock, respectively based on the presence or absence of spare marks in the underlying contract description on the admission of the current network provider.

5. A method according to claim 1,

characterized in that

spare contracts are pro-actively negotiated in such a way that they can be used in case handover situations occur and at least one of said spare contracts becomes applicable.

6. A method according to claim 1,

characterized by

a signaling of state block or state unblock during a re-negotiation whenever a change of technology and/or a change of the respective network provider caused by a handover situation occurs.

7. A method according to claim 1,

characterized by

a detailed mapping of E2ENP over SIP via piggybacking.

8. A method according to claim 1,

characterized by

a signaling support of third-party-assisted negotiation.

9. A method according to claim 1,

characterized by

a signaling support of one-to-many communication scenario and many-to-many communication scenarios.

10. A method according to claim 1,

characterized by

the concept of deploying E2ENP signaling sessions exploiting incrementally any negotiation result of earlier E2ENP signaling sessions, whereby each E2ENP signaling session corresponds to one of the various E2ENP phases.

11. A method according to claim 10,

characterized by

the concept of deploying E2ENP phases (micro and/or macro) logically arranged in a tree-like structure which is built by means of several reference chains.

12. A method according to claim 10,

characterized by

the concept of leasing sub-trees for different E2ENP phases (micro and/or macro) that are arranged in treelike structures.

13. A method according to claim 10,

characterized by

the concept of deploying zombie states for the delayed release of expired sub-trees for said E2ENP phases (micro and/or macro), sub-trees which are then released as soon as all pending connections are closed.

14. A method according to claim 10,

characterized by

the concept of an incremental negotiation for micro phases.

15. A method according to claim 10,

wherein RTP is applied,

wherein a re-negotiation is performed during the media streaming of the peers that is based on a pre-negotiated state referring to a pre-negotiated quality-of-service contract and a pre-negotiated set of capabilities, characterized in that

a sender peer can decide to change the format of the media stream by employing other negotiated codecs and signal this change by using well-known in-band to one or more receivers by substituting the RTP payload type in the RTP header with the payload type corresponding to the new codecs whenever remaining within an agreed QoS contract,

or said sender peer can explicitly use an E2ENP signaling when a QoS violation and/or a QoS change occurs, and/or QoS correlation and time synchronization constraints have to be enforced across multiple media streams.

16. A method according to claim 10,

characterized by

the concept of NULL-streams for explicitly stopping media streams in case of bandwidth degradations in order to flexibly maintain telecommunication sessions.

17. A method according to claim 10,

characterized in that

peers negotiate during the pre-negotiation step sets of quality-of-service contracts on a per-stream basis and/or on a per-stream-association basis at the finest level of resolution, in which media stream associations are bundles of media streams from one sender peer to a receiver peer.

18. A method according to claim 1,

characterized in that

peers are informed about changes in quality-of-service and/or capability configurations via E2ENP signaling.

19. A method according to claim 18,

characterized in that

pre-negotiated alternative quality and configuration information of a given type of media stream may already be available at a server for clients to choose from.

20. A method according to claim 1,

comprising the steps of protocol discovery, pre-negotiation, optional multi-media stream QoS synchronization and QoS correlation, fast-negotiation deploying an economy principle, re-negotiation deploying said economy principle and resource reservation release.

21. A method according to claim 20,

wherein the multi-media stream time synchronization and QoS correlation phase is optional and required only if an initiator communicates with multiple peers by using multiple media streams, which need to be correlated and synchronized, based on user policies to be enforced at the initiator side only.

22. A method according to claim 21,

wherein the protocol discovery and pre-negotiation phases are executed a priori, and the results can then be applied to multiple successive signaling sessions for establishing multiple successive telecommunication session. Each telecommunication session is initiated with a specific optional multi-media stream time synchronization and QoS correlation phase.

23. A method according to claim 22,

wherein, if the results of the multi-media stream time synchronization phase and QoS correlation phase are applicable to multiple successive telecommunication sessions that can be initiated with a specific fast-negotiation phase.

24. A method according to claim 20,

wherein the protocol interacts with Local resource management units during pre-negotiation, multi-stream time synchronization and QoS correlation, fast-negotiation, re-negotiation and resource release phases.

25. A method according to claim 20,

wherein during runtime of a so established multimedia session, at any time any component of any peer may request an adaptation, thus eventually triggering a re-negotiation phase.

26. A method according to claim 20,

comprising the step of pre-negotiation of the type of E2ENP during the protocol discovery phase, either by forcing peers to query a directory server which may be implemented as a SIP registrar, or by having the peers announcing such information.

27. A method according to claim 26,

comprising the step of pre-negotiation of different capabilities during said pre-negotiation phase.

28. A method according to claim 20,

comprising the step of

pre-negotiation of a complete codec list during said pre-negotiation phase.

29. A method according to claim 20,

comprising the step of

pre-negotiation of adaptation paths at media stream level during the pre-negotiation phase.

30. A method according to claim 20,

comprising the step of

pre-negotiation of adaptation paths at the media stream aggregation level during the multi-stream time synchronization phase and the QoS correlation phase.

31. A method according to claim 20,

characterized by the steps of

indexing pre-negotiated QoS contracts and capabilities for speeding up the fast-negotiation phase, and

indexing pre-negotiated QoS contracts and capabilities for speeding up the re-negotiation phase.

32. A method according to claim 20,

characterized by the step of

handling installation and/or deinstallation of capabilities even at runtime, by exchanging asynchronous messages among peers for notifying such events.

33. A computer software program product,

characterized in that

it implements a method according to claim 1 when running on a computing device.

34. A peer, configured for implementing a method according to claim 1,

comprising a coordination unit coordinating the different phases of the End-to-End Negotiation Protocol (E2ENP) and of the distributed resource management process,

characterized in that

the coordination unit commands a protocol discovery, and then triggers and coordinates pre-negotiation, optional multi-stream time synchronization and QoS correlation, fast-negotiation with economy principle, re-negotiation with economy principle, and resource reservation release phase.

35. A peer according to claim 34,

characterized by

a session protocol unit allowing the coordination unit to carry out the different phases of End-to-End Negotiation Protocol (E2ENP).

36. A method according to claim 1,

characterized in that

the negotiation and use of session identifiers is derived from session identifier tuples via hash in order to limit the size of E2ENP PDUs, in which the complete session identifier tuples, each comprising at least one calculated hash, are used in the first PDU of any given E2ENP phase or concatenation thereof.

37. A method according to claim 1,

characterized in that

the E2ENP encompasses a third-party-assisted negotiation by means of a mediator.

38. A method according to claim 1,

characterized by

E2ENP mechanisms for enforcing consistency and avoiding dead locks.

39. A method according to claim 1,

characterized in that

the E2ENP is capable of handling one-to-one communication scenarios, one-to-many communication scenarios, and many-to-many communication scenarios.

40. A method according to claim 1,

characterized by

a transcoding service used for coupling transcoding units with SIP proxies and directory services to allow the offerer using a specific transcoding unit or a chain thereof whenever required.

41. A method according to claim 40,

characterized in that

the offerer has the possibility to ask for support from the network operator or any other service provider to provide transcoding service by managing third-party negotiation among the offerer, the various transcoders in the middle, and the answerer whenever the E2ENP session between these end peers fails in case no agreement has been reached.

42. A method according to claim 40,

characterized in that

the transcoding service orchestrates the pairing of nodes in the chain of peers, and takes care that resources are properly reserved via the E2ENP economy principle.

43. A method according to claim 40,

characterized by

a cooperation of transcoding services offered by different providers by using the E2ENP for performing third-party negotiation.

44. A method according to claim 36,

characterized in that

the error handling of the E2ENP is symmetrical by applying error codes to signal both internal and external failure conditions, exceptions and errors occurring at any of the peers involved in the E2ENP signaling affected by the E2ENP.