BANDWIDTH MANAGEMENT IN EACH NETWORK DEVICE IN A SWITCHED DIGITAL VIDEO ENVIRONMENT

• US 20070106782A1
• Filed: 11/10/2005
• Published: 05/10/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 11/10/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Scientific-Atlanta Incorporated (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Inventors: Wall, William, Versteeg, William, Briggs, Peter
• Application Number:
  US11/164,119
• Publication Number:
  US 20070106782A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2801 Broadband local area networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0896 Bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities flow or congestion control using dynamic resource allocation, e.g. in-call renegotiation, H04L47/76
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5003 Managing SLA; Interaction between SLA and QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5009 Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5067 Customer-centric QoS measurements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/509 wherein the managed service relates to media content delivery, e.g. audio, video or TV
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/10 Flow control; Congestion control
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/15 in relation to multipoint traffic arrangements for broadcast or multicast in data networks H04L12/18
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/70 Admission control; Resource allocation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/783 Distributed allocation of resources, e.g. bandwidth brokers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/801 Real time traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/805 QOS or priority aware
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/806 Broadcast or multicast traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1043 Gateway controllers, e.g. media gateway control protocol [MGCP] controllers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1101 Session protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/80 Responding to QoS

Abstract

Bandwidth management in each network device in a switched digital video environment. Each device in a user'"'"'s home and the switched digital video (SDV) device can evaluate the bandwidth requirements of a request from any device in the home and compare it to the bandwidth available at the user'"'"'s home. This is done as the request is passed upstream from device to device. If there is insufficient bandwidth available, an error message is returned to the requesting device.

Claims

1. A system for receiving and evaluating requests for at least one of services and channels, said system comprising:

one or more home devices at a plurality of subscriber premises;

a switched digital video (SDV) device for connecting said subscriber premises to a broadcast network;

at least one of said devices receives said request, said one device evaluates said request by comparing bandwidth requirements of said request to available bandwidth of one of said subscriber premises.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein said at least one device is at least one of said home devices adapted to either grant said request because said bandwidth requirements are within said available bandwidth and deny said request when bandwidth requirements of said request exceed said available bandwidth to said one subscriber premises.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein said at least one device is at least one of said SDV devices adapted to either grant said request because said bandwidth requirements are within said available bandwidth and deny said request when bandwidth requirements of said request exceed said available bandwidth to said one subscriber premises.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein said at least one device denies one of said requests because the bandwidth requirement of one said request exceeds said available bandwidth.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein said at least one device grants one of said requests because the bandwidth requirement of one said device is within said available bandwidth.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one device grants one of said request because the bandwidth requirement of one said request is within said available bandwidth through one said device and, wherein another of said devices compares bandwidth requirements of said request to available bandwidth.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein said another of said devices grants one of said requests because the bandwidth requirement of one said request exceeds said available bandwidth.

8. The system of claim 6, wherein said another of said devices denies one of said request because the bandwidth requirement of one said request exceeds said available bandwidth.

9. The system of claim 6, wherein said one device is a home device and said other device is a SDV device.

10. The system of claim 6, wherein said one device and said other device are home devices.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein said SDV devices are one of a digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM), a digital content manager (DCM), or an optical line terminal (OLT).

12. A method for receiving and evaluating a request for at least one of services and channels, said method comprising the steps of:

connecting a plurality of subscriber premises to a broadcast network with a switched digital video (SDV) device;

connecting one or more devices in each of said subscriber premises to said SDV device;

receiving at one of said devices a request for at least one of said services or channels; and

evaluating said request by comparing said bandwidth requirement of said request to available bandwidth of one of said subscriber premises.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising the step of denying said request because the bandwidth requirement of said request exceeds said available bandwidth.

14. The method of claim 12, further comprising the step of granting said request because the bandwidth requirement of said request is within said available bandwidth.

15. The method of claim 12, further comprising the steps of at least one device granting said request because the bandwidth requirement of said request is within said available bandwidth through one said device and, wherein another of said devices compares bandwidth requirements of said request to available bandwidth.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising the step of updating a current status of said request.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein the step of updating said current status of said request comprises updating bandwidth requirement of said request.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein the step of updating said current status of said request comprises updating said available bandwidth.

19. The method of claim 15, further comprising the step of another of said devices granting said request because the bandwidth requirement of said request exceeds said available bandwidth.

20. The method of claim 15, further comprising the step of another of said devices denying said request because the bandwidth requirement of said request exceeds said available bandwidth.

21. The method of claim 12, wherein said step of receiving a request comprises a request to implement a channel change by leaving a current channel and joining a requested channel.

22. The method of claim 21, further comprising the steps of terminating said current channel and transmitting said requested channel.

23. The method of claim 12, further comprising the step of updating a current status of said request.

24. The method of claim 23, wherein the step of updating said current status of said request comprises updating bandwidth requirement of said request.

25. The method of claim 23, wherein the step of updating said current status of said request comprises updating said available bandwidth.