METHOD OF SENDING DATA PACKETS FROM A SERVER TO CLIENTS VIA A DATA LINK THAT HAS A GIVEN ERROR RATE

• US 20080219154A1
• Filed: 03/04/2008
• Published: 09/11/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/09/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Thales SA
• Original Assignee: Thales SA
• Inventors: Trinquecoste, Frederic, DURREY, Florent, Correa, Paulo
• Application Number:
  US12/041,813
• Publication Number:
  US 20080219154A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/225
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4331 Caching operations, e.g. of an advertisement for later insertion during playback
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/43637 involving a wireless protocol, e.g. Bluetooth, RF or wireless LAN [IEEE 802.11] arrangements for wireless networking or broadcasting of information in indoor or near-field type systems H04B10/114
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4425 Monitoring of client processing errors or hardware failure
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47202 for requesting content on demand, e.g. video on demand
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/632 using a connection between clients on a wide area network, e.g. setting up a peer-to-peer communication via Internet for retrieving video segments from the hard-disk of other client devices broadcast-related systems characterised by transmission among terminal devices H04H60/80; distributed application using peer-to-peer [P2P] networks H04L67/104
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/637 Control signals issued by the client directed to the server or network components
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17309 Transmission or handling of upstream communications
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17318 Direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method of sending data packets from a server to clients via a first data link that has a given error rate. The clients are interconnected by a second data link that has a lower error rate than that of the first link. The server sends all the packets to all the clients over the first link, regardless of the client that is the recipient of each of the packets. A client that detects that it has not received a packet of which it is the recipient over the first link requests the other clients to send said packet to it over the second link. The Invention is particularly applicable for video-on-demand.

Claims

1. A method of sending data packets from a server to clients via a first data link that has a given error rate, each packet being addressed to a client, the clients all being interconnected via a second data link (13) that has an error rate that is lower than that of the first link, comprising the steps of:

sending, by the server, sends all the packets to all the clients over the first link, regardless of the client that is the recipient of each of the packets;

detecting by a client that detects the client has not received a packet of which it is the recipient over the first link and requesting the other clients to send the packet to the client requesting the packet over the second link.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the first data link is a wireless link and the second data link is a wired link.

3. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the first data link is a link compliant with the IEEE802.11 standard and the second data link is a link compliant with the IEEE802.3 standard.

4. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the server sends a given packet only once over the first link, by addressing said packet simultaneously to all the clients.

5. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein at least three clients are interconnected by the second link.

6. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein a client requests a given packet only once over the second link, by addressing said request to all the other clients.

7. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the server numbers the packets that it sends to the clients, a client using the numbering of the packets to detect that it has not received a packet.

8. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the clients are interconnected via their receivers.

9. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the packets contain audio and/or video data that can be used by player modules included in the clients.

10. The method as claimed in claim 9, wherein the audio and/or video data are broadcast to passengers of an aircraft.