MAPPING HUMAN-MEANINGFUL PARAMETERS TO NETWORK-MEANINGFUL PARAMETERS TO PERMIT USER TO ESTABLISH TRAFFIC IMPORTANCE IN HOME NETWORK

• US 20100005170A1
• Filed: 07/01/2008
• Published: 01/07/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/01/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Inventors: Li, Chong Liang, Harrington, Kendra, Nelson, Franklyn S., HUOTARI, ALLEN JOSEPH, Dattagupta, Siddhartha
• Granted Patent: US 8,583,771 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/225
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2809 indicating that an appliance service is present in a home automation network monitoring functionality H04L43/0817; discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services, H04L67/51
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2814 Exchanging control software or macros for controlling appliance services in a home automation network arrangements for maintenance or administration involving configuration of the network and network elements H04L41/08
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/282 based on user interaction within the home receiver circuitry for displaying additional information being controlled by a remote control apparatus H04N21/42204
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/10 Flow control; Congestion control
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/2433 Allocation of priorities to traffic types
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/2483 involving identification of individual flows

Abstract

A method of describing highly valued traffic in a home network in terms that are meaningful for a human and that are translated to useful network parameters.

Claims

1. Method comprising:

establishing relationships between home network parameters and abstractions of the home network parameters;

displaying the abstractions;

permitting a user to establish data traffic importances in a home network using the abstractions; and

implementing the data traffic importances using the home network parameters.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the abstractions are human-meaningful terms.

3. The method of claim 1, comprising mapping the human-meaningful terms to respective network parameters.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein at least one human-meaningful term is a user-established device name and a respective network parameter corresponding to the user-established device name is a destination address.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein at least one human-meaningful term is a manufacturer-established device model designation and a respective network parameter corresponding to the model designation is a destination address.

6. The method of claim 2, wherein at least one human-meaningful term is a device capability and a respective network parameter corresponding to the device capability is a protocol type.

7. The method of claim 2, wherein a data structure correlating the human-meaningful terms to respective network parameters is stored in a residential gateway device communicating with a wide area network.

8. An apparatus comprising:

at least one processor;

at least one computer-readable medium accessible to the processor and bearing mapping between network parameters and human-meaningful terms in a home network, the network parameters being useful by a computer to convey data traffic in the home network, the human-meaningful terms being useful for presenting a user interface to a person.

9. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the user interface is operable to establish importance of network data in terms of the human-meaningful terms.

10. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the network parameters include device addresses.

11. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the device addresses include media access control (MAC) addresses.

12. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the device addresses include Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.

13. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the network parameters include protocol type.

14. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the human-meaningful terms include at least one network device name established by a user of the home network.

15. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the human-meaningful terms include at least one model designation of a network device, the model designation being established by a manufacturer of the network device.

16. A residential gateway (RG) configured to establish communication between a wide area network and a home network, the RG comprising:

at least one processor; and

at least one tangible computer-readable medium accessible to the processor and bearing at least one data structure correlating terms that are meaningful to a human to respective network parameters to implement user-defined traffic importance in the home network.

17. The RG of claim 16, wherein the terms that are meaningful to a human are presented on a user interface to allow the user to establish the traffic importance.

18. The RG of claim 16, wherein the network parameters include device addresses.

19. The RG of claim 16, wherein the terms that are meaningful to a human include at least one network device name established by a user of the home network.

20. The RG of claim 16, wherein the terms that are meaningful to a human include at least one model designation of a network device, the model designation being established by a manufacturer of the network device.

21. Apparatus comprising:

means for establishing relationships between home network parameters and abstractions of the home network parameters;

means for displaying the abstractions;

means for permitting a user to establish data traffic importances in a home network using the abstractions; and

means for implementing the data traffic importances using the home network parameters.