RESOURCE ARBITRATION IN A CONVERGED MULTI-MEDIA ENVIRONMENT

• US 20090185576A1
• Filed: 01/20/2009
• Published: 07/23/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 01/21/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: RPX Corporation
• Original Assignee: Lucent Technologies, Inc. (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Robinson, Dave Cecil, Kisel, Andrey, Schutte, Tiaan
• Granted Patent: US 9,661,099 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/462
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/70 Admission control; Resource allocation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/808 User-type aware
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/824 Applicable to portable or mobile terminals
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles

Abstract

A data communication system, comprising an access control agent arranged on a network to allocate network resources on one or more UE (user equipment) devices on the network according to one or more parameters, the access control agent being remote from the UE.

Claims

1. A data communication system, comprising an access control agent arranged on a network to allocate resources on one or more UE (user equipment) devices on the network according to one or more parameters, the access control agent being remote from the UE.

2. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the access control agent allocates resources according to the type and nature of resource being required and according to one or more of profiles, presence, personalisation, policies or other information.

3. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the UE is IPTV equipment.

4. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the access control agent makes decisions based on one or more of profile information, presence information, personalisation, including buddy lists associated with the user of a UE, general or specific policy and information via standard or specific interfaces prior to assigning resources for a given multi-media session.

5. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the resources comprise any one or more of speakers, display, microphone or microphone input, use of various data input/output devices.

6. A system as claimed in claim 1, includes a notification agent adapted to receive notification from a plurality of sources each using a particular protocol and providing these notifications to the UE over a common protocol.

7. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the access control agent is shared between a plurality of UEs, and including a cache for caching data.

8. A system as claimed in claim 2, wherein external data sources, remote from the UE, are accessed to determine the profile, presence, personalisation or policy information.

10. An access control agent as claimed in claim 1, adapted to allocate resources according to the type and nature of resource required and according to one or more of profiles, personalisation, policies or other information.

9. An access control agent comprising means for allocating resources available to one or more remote UE devices on a network according to one or more parameters.

11. A method of arbitrating and allocating resource use of a UE provided on a network comprising, when a request arises to use one or more resources, causing an access control agent provided remotely from the UE to allocate and arbitrate resource use at the UE according to one or more parameters.

12. A method as claimed in claim 11, wherein the UE is an IPTV device.

13. A method as claimed in claim 11, wherein the parameters include one or more of profile, presence, personalisation and policy, and are provided to the ACA from sources remote to the UE.

14. A method as claimed in claim 13, wherein access to UE resources is revised via an abstraction layer of common UE APIs.

15. A method as claimed in claim 11, wherein initial notifications to a UE are handled by a notification agent, remote from the UE, which communicates with a plurality of notification sources each using a particular profile and provides these notifications to the UE over a common protocol.

16. A method as claimed in claim 11, wherein the ACA is adapted to deliver additional information to a UE if required.

17. A method as claimed in claim 11, wherein the additional information is delivered as a web page or reference to a web page.