Quality of service packet processing without explicit control negotiations

• US 20110019556A1
• Filed: 07/24/2009
• Published: 01/27/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 07/24/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Hsin, Chih-Fan, Sood, Kapil
• Granted Patent: US 8,274,908 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/252
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/80 Responding to QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/22 Parsing or analysis of headers
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/00 Supervisory, monitoring or testing arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/24 Negotiating SLA [Service Level Agreement]; Negotiating QoS [Quality of Service]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/04 adapted for relaying to or from another terminal or user

Abstract

Apparatuses, methods, systems, and computer program products to process QoS packets of wireless traffic without explicit control negotiations are disclosed. An embodiment may comprise a mobile computing device with wireless communications capabilities. The mobile computing device may be a client that associates or connects with an access point or communicates another client device, such as a peripheral device with wireless capabilities. The mobile computing device may monitor wireless packet traffic being transmitted from the mobile computing device. For example, the mobile computing device may monitor the packets being transmitted from a video streaming application to the peripheral device, which may comprise an LCD monitor that has wireless communications capabilities. The mobile computing device may mark the packets of the video stream as QoS packets even though the video streaming application may not do so, and place the marked packets in a QoS queue for priority processing.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

receiving, by an element of a first station, header data and payload data from a networking application, wherein the payload data is to be transmitted in a packet to a second station via a wireless transmitter of the first station, wherein the header data specifies that the packet is associated with a first quality of service (QoS) category;

analyzing, by the first station, the header data or the payload data to associate the packet with a second QoS category, wherein the priority of the second QoS category is higher than the priority of the first QoS category; and

setting, by the first station, at least one bit of the IP header for the packet based on the analyzing to mark the packet and associate the packet with the second QoS category.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

placing the packet into a queue of a plurality of queues, wherein the queue is associated with the second QoS category.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the receiving the header data and the payload data comprises receiving the packet from a third station, wherein the networking application comprises a streaming video application or a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) application, wherein further the third station comprises a server of the Internet.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

transmitting, based on the priority of the QoS category, the packet to the second station via a peer-to-peer connection between the first station and the second station.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the receiving the payload data from the networking application comprises receiving audio and video data from a multimedia application of the first station.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the analyzing the header data or the payload data comprises comparing at least one of a source IP address, a source port number, a destination IP address, a destination port number, and a protocol of the packet with an entry of a filter.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the setting the at least one bit of the IP header comprises associating the packet with a video (VI) access category, wherein further the first QoS category comprises a best effort (BE) access category.

8. An apparatus, comprising:

a receiver module to receive header data and payload data for a packet, wherein a networking application associates the packet to a first quality of service (QoS) category via the header data, wherein further the packet is to be wirelessly transmitted to a receiving station;

an analysis module to analyze at least one of the header data and the payload data; and

a QoS module to mark the packet, based on the analysis, by setting at least one bit of the header data, wherein the marking of the packet changes the association of the packet from the first QoS category to a second QoS category, wherein further the second QoS category is a higher priority category than the first QoS category.

9. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the receiver module comprises dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and the analysis module comprises a microprocessor configured to execute firmware instructions for the analyzing of the at least one of the header data and the payload data.

10. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the apparatus comprises a mobile computing device and the analysis module and the QoS module comprise a prioritization engine of a driver of a wireless communication device of the mobile computing device, wherein further the networking application comprises a streaming video application of the mobile computing device.

11. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the analysis module is configured to place the packet in one queue of a plurality of queues according to the second QoS category, wherein further the QoS module is configured to adaptively update entries of a filter based on analyses of the analysis module.

12. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the analysis module is configured to analyze the header data and match the packet with the second QoS category based on at least one traffic classification criterion, wherein further the classification criterion comprises one of a protocol identifier, a source or destination port, packet size, and packet rate.

13. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the analysis module is configured to perform a packet analysis of the payload data to identify a type of video traffic, wherein further the networking application comprises a DVD multimedia application.

14. A system, comprising:

a wireless communication device coupled to an antenna, the antenna configured to transmit a packet to a station of a wireless communication network, wherein the packet comprises header data and payload data;

wherein further a networking application associates the packet to a first quality of service (QoS) category;

dynamic random access memory (DRAM) to store coded instructions of a prioritization engine of a driver of the wireless communication device; and

a processor coupled to the DRAM, the processor to execute the coded instructions to analyze the packet and mark the packet, wherein the marking is to change an association of the packet from the first QoS category to a second QoS category based on the analysis.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein execution of the coded instructions of the prioritization engine perform the analysis by comparing data of the header data with data previously associated with a plurality of QoS categories, wherein further the prioritization engine enables chipsets of the system and the processor and to change power states of the system.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the analysis comprises comparison of the packet to at least one of a number of packet criteria, the packet criteria comprising packet protocol, packet size, a port number, a packet IP address, a packet ingress rate, and a packet egress rate.

17. A computer program product for, the computer program product comprising:

a computer useable tangible medium having a computer useable program code embodied therewith, the computer useable program code comprising;

computer useable program code configured to perform operations, the operations comprising;

receiving header data and payload data from a networking application, wherein the payload data is to be transmitted in a packet to a station via a wireless transmitter, wherein the header data specifies that the packet is associated with a first quality of service (QoS) category;

analyzing the header data or the payload data to associate the packet with a second QoS category, wherein the priority of the second QoS category is higher than the priority of the first QoS category; and

setting at least one bit of the header data based on the analyzing, wherein the setting is to mark the packet and associate the packet with the second QoS category.

18. The computer program product of claim 17, wherein the setting the at least one bit comprises associating the packet with one of a voice (VO) access category and a video (VI) access category, wherein further the first QoS category comprises a best effort (BE) access category.

19. The computer program product of claim 18, the operations further comprising:

enabling a system of the computer program product to change power states based on at least one of an arrival rate of packets received by the system and an egress rate of packets transmitted from the system.

20. The computer program product of claim 19, wherein the tangible medium comprises nonvolatile memory of a network interface card (NIC).