Traffic Differentiated Network Services

• US 20090144433A1
• Filed: 12/03/2007
• Published: 06/04/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 12/03/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: T-Mobile Innovations LLC (Deutsche Telekom AG)
• Original Assignee: Sprint Communications Company LP (Deutsche Telekom AG)
• Inventors: Santharam, Arun, Bertz, Lyle T., Rogers, Frederick C., Breau, Jeremy
• Granted Patent: US 7,979,564 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/228
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/63 Routing a service request depending on the request content or context
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/14 Multichannel or multilink protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/00 Services specially adapted for wireless communication networks; Facilities therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 8/30 Network data restoration; Network data reliability; Network data fault tolerance

Abstract

A method, system, and computer-readable medium are provided for efficiently providing network services to client devices based on the network traffic to be communicated between the device and the network. A system is provided that includes a number of home agents configured to provide network services to mobile nodes. The system is configured in such a way that at least one of the mobile nodes may be served by more than one of the home agents. Thereby, for example, a certain mobile node may be provided voice service via one home agent and email messages via another.

Claims

1. A system for providing network services to mobile client devices, the system comprising:

a plurality of mobile nodes configured to communicate over a network; and

two or more home agents configured to provide network services to the plurality of mobile nodes;

wherein the system is configured to provide network services to one of the plurality of mobile nodes via two or more of the two or more home agents.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the network comprises an IP network.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein one of the two or more home agents is assigned to provide network services to one of the plurality of mobile nodes based on network traffic to be communicated between said one of the plurality of mobile nodes and the network.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one of the plurality of mobile nodes communicates an indication of expected application layer traffic to the network.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein one of the plurality of mobile nodes is configured to establish two or more network sessions for communicating over the network, wherein each of the two or more network sessions is dedicated to handle a different subset of network traffic communicated between said one of the plurality of mobile nodes and the network.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein one of the plurality of mobile nodes comprises:

a first network session slot configured to communicate a first class of application layer traffic over the network; and

a second network session slot configured to communicate a second class of application layer traffic over the network.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein:

a first home agent, selected from the two or more home agents, provides network services to said one of the plurality of mobile nodes via the first network session slot; and

a second home agent, also selected from the two or more home agents, provides network services to said one of the plurality of mobile nodes via the second network session slot.

8. The system of claim 6, wherein at least one of said first class of application layer traffic and said second class of application layer traffic is selected from a list including:

email traffic, pager traffic, text messaging traffic, voice traffic, peer-to-peer traffic, GPS traffic, file transfer traffic, web browsing traffic, image traffic, video traffic, audio traffic, streaming audio traffic, or streaming video traffic.

9. One or more computer-readable media having computer-useable instructions embodied thereon for performing a method of enabling network sessions between a client device and a network, the method comprising:

transmitting a network registration request message to the network to initiate a network session, wherein the network registration request message comprises an indication of application layer traffic to be transmitted over the network session; and

receiving a network registration response message from the network.

10. The media of claim 9, wherein the indication of application layer traffic comprises a MIME Type.

11. The media of claim 9, the method further comprising:

transmitting a second network registration request message to the network to initiate a second network session, wherein the second network registration request message comprises a second indication of application layer traffic to be transmitted over the second network session; and

receiving a second network registration response message from the network.

12. The media of claim 11, wherein the method further comprises determining that the second network session between the client device and the network is desirable based on application layer traffic to be transmitted over the second network session.

13. The media of claim 12, wherein the network comprises an IP network.

14. The media of claim 12, wherein the client device comprises a mobile node.

15. The media of claim 14, wherein at least one of said network session and said second network session comprises a Mobile IP session.

16. A computer implemented method for enabling network sessions between a mobile node and a network, the method comprising:

receiving a network registration request message from the mobile node, wherein the network registration request message comprises an indication of application layer traffic to be transmitted over a network session;

utilizing the indication of application layer traffic to assign a home agent to support the network session;

transmitting the network registration request message to the assigned home agent;

receiving a network registration response message from the assigned home agent; and

transmitting the network registration response message to the mobile node.

17. The computer implemented method of claim 16, the method further comprising:

receiving a second network registration request message from the mobile node, wherein the second network registration request message comprises a second indication of application layer traffic to be transmitted over a second network session;

utilizing the second indication of application layer traffic to assign a second home agent to support the second network session;

transmitting the second network registration request message to the second home agent;

receiving a second network registration response message from the second home agent; and

transmitting the second network registration response message to the mobile node.

18. The computer implemented method of claim 17, wherein at least one of said indication of application layer traffic and said second indication of application layer traffic comprises a MIME Type.

19. The computer implemented method of claim 17, wherein at least one of said network session and said second network session comprises a Mobile IP session.

20. The computer implemented method of claim 16, wherein the network registration response message further comprises an indication of a version of a client application intending to communicate with the network;

and

wherein the method further comprises;

determining that a newer version of the client application is available; and

transmitting an upgrade notification message, indicating that the newer version of the client application is available.