CONGESTION AND THRU-PUT VISIBILITY AND ISOLATION
3 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
Offering vertical services to subscribers and service providers is an avenue to immediately improve the competitiveness of digital subscriber line access service, for example of the type offered by a local exchange carrier. To deliver high-quality vertical services, however, the underlying ADSL Data Network (ADN) or the like needs to establish Quality of Service (QoS) as a core characteristic and offer an efficient mechanism for insertion of the vertical services. The inventive network architecture introduces QoS into the ADN, in a manner that enables the delivery of sophisticated and demanding IP-based services to subscribers, does not affect existing Internet tiers of service, and is cost-effective in terms of initial costs, build-out, and ongoing operations. The architecture utilizes a switch capable of examining and selectively forwarding packets or frames based on higher layer information in the protocol stack, that is to say on information that is encapsulated in the layer-2 information utilized to define normal connectivity through the network. The switch enables segregation of upstream traffic by type and downstream aggregation of Internet traffic together with traffic from a local services domain for vertical services and other local services. Systems coupled to the local services domain alone or in combination with software in servers and/or a user'"'"'s computer enable a testing of connectivity, throughput, QoS metrics and the like through selected points of the ADN network.
90 Citations
52 Claims
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1-28. -28. (canceled)
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29. A method comprising:
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receiving a service assessment request; initiating a first service assessment on a communications link between a test point and a first computing device in response to the service assessment request; initiating a second service assessment on a communications link between the test point and a second computing device in response to the service assessment request; and automatically reporting the results of the first and second service assessments. - View Dependent Claims (30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38)
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39. A method comprising:
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receiving a service assessment request; identifying a customer computing device and a remote computing device based on the service assessment request; responding to the request by providing network health information and a plurality of test options; receiving a selection of at least one of the plurality of test options; initiating a service assessment on a communications link between the remote computing device and a test computing device; and automatically reporting the results of the service assessment. - View Dependent Claims (40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45)
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46. A system comprising:
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a test computing device coupled to an access data network, the access data network coupled to a wide area network and a subscriber premises; and a remote computing device coupled to the access data network and accessible via a subscriber computing device connected to the access data network; wherein the test computing device is configured to; receive a service assessment request; identify the remote computing device and the subscriber computing device based on the service assessment request, initiate a first service assessment on a communications link between a test point and the remote computing device in response to the service assessment request, initiate a second service assessment on a communications link between the test point and the subscriber computing device in response to the service assessment request, and automatically report the results of the first and second service assessments. - View Dependent Claims (47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52)
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Specification