PACKET TRANSMISSION ON A CLIENT USING IMPLICIT ENABLING OF FEATURES BASED ON SERVICE CLASSIFICATIONS

• US 20130204965A1
• Filed: 09/15/2012
• Published: 08/08/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 02/03/2012
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Masputra, Cahya, Bhooma, Padmavathy, Biswas, Anumita
• Application Number:
  US13/620,988
• Publication Number:
  US 20130204965A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/217
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/2441 relying on flow classification, e.g. using integrated services [IntServ]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/60 implementing hierarchical scheduling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/6215 Individual queue per QOS, rate or priority

Abstract

A method implemented on a client device having a networking layer and a network driver layer for transmitting network packets comprising: receiving a packet to be transmitted from the client device to a destination over a network socket; classifying the packet according to an implicit packet service classification provided by the networking layer or a user-specific packet service classification explicitly specified by an application, the implicit classification having a default traffic classification queue and default scheduler associated therewith and the user-specified classification having a user-specified traffic classification and user-specified scheduler associated therewith; and enqueuing and scheduling the packet for transmission according to either the default or the user-specific traffic classifications.

Claims

1. A method implemented on a client device having a networking layer and a network driver layer for transmitting network packets comprising:

receiving a packet to be transmitted from the client device to a destination over a network socket;

classifying the packet according to an implicit packet service classification provided by the networking layer or a user-specific packet service classification explicitly specified by an application, the implicit classification having a default traffic classification queue and default scheduler associated therewith and the user-specified classification having a user-specified traffic classification and user-specified scheduler associated therewith; and

enqueuing and scheduling the packet for transmission according to either the default or the user-specific traffic classifications.

2. The method as in claim 1 wherein a packet to be transmitted is stored in one of the queues based on the packet service classifications, and wherein a packet scheduler schedules packets for transmission according to the packet service classifications.

3. The method as in claim 2 wherein one or more applications executed on the client device explicitly classifies packets using one of the packet service classifications and wherein after the classification, the packets to be transmitted for that application are queued in queues associated with those packet service classifications.

4. The method as in claim 2 wherein N packet service classes are mapped to M transmit queues, wherein N is greater than or equal to M.

5. The method as in claim 1 wherein each packet service classification has a different relative priority associated therewith.

6. The method as in claim 5 wherein network control packets are assigned to a packet service classification having the highest relative priority level.

7. The method as in claim 1 further comprising a network driver layer in communication with the networking layer, wherein when a network packet is ready to be transmitted from a particular queue, the networking layer notifies the driver layer which then dequeues the packet from the queue and transmits the packet over the network.

8. The method as in claim 1 wherein packet service classifications are based on one or more of a delay tolerance level specifying how tolerant an application is to packet delay, a loss tolerance level specifying how tolerant an application is to packet loss, and an elasticity of flow level specifying how tolerant an application is to changes in bandwidth.

9. The method as in claim 8 wherein packet service classifications having relatively lower delay tolerance level associated therewith are given relatively higher priority compared with packet service classifications having relatively higher delay tolerance levels.

10. The method as in claim 8 wherein packet service classifications having relatively lower loss tolerance associated therewith are given relatively higher priority compared with packet service classifications having relatively higher loss tolerance.

11. The method as in claim 8 wherein packet service classifications having relatively lower elasticity of bandwidth associated therewith are given relatively higher priority compared with packet service classifications having relatively higher elasticity of bandwidth.

12. The method as in claim 8 wherein one or more of the following packet service classifications are used:

background system-initiated;

background;

best effort;

responsive data;

operations, administration, and management;

multimedia audio/video streaming;

responsive multimedia audio/video;

interactive video;

interactive audio; and

network control.

13. The method as in claim 2 further comprising:

determining features which need to be enabled for the network socket, based on the characteristics of the corresponding service classifications.

14. The method as in claim 13 wherein one of the features comprises opportunistic transmit behavior.

15. The method as in claim 13 wherein one of the features comprises TCP Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT) congestion control on transmit and/or TCP IP Packet Delay Variation (IPDV) on receive.

16. The method as in claim 13 wherein one of the features comprises TCP Large Receive Offload (LRO) on receive.

17. The method as in claim 2 further comprising:

performing one or more opportunistic operations during voice call including suspending certain queues associated with certain packet service classifications.

18. The method as in claim 17 wherein one of the packet service classifications comprises background system-initiated (BK_SYS) packet service classifications.

19. The method as in claim 18 further comprising:

providing a “

suspend”

event to an application which classifies its socket with a BK_SYS service class.

20. The method as in claim 19 wherein the socket classified with the BK_SYS service class is no longer in a writeable state and any attempts to send packets over the socket result in data being dropped.

21. The method as in claim 20 wherein, when the voice call is ended, the suspension of the queue(s) associated with the BK_SYS service classifications are removed.

22. The method as in claim 21 wherein an application which previously received a “

suspend”

event for its BK_SYS socket receives a “

resume”

event to place the socket in a writable state.

23. The method as in claim 15 wherein TCP LEDBAT and IPDV are used for connections that are willing to yield to other packet traffic and thus are not time critical.

24. The method as in claim 16 wherein TCP LRO is used as a performance optimization such that TCP packets are aggregated up to a limit so that they can all be processed in a batch in a TCP input path.

25. A machine-readable medium having program code stored thereon which, when executed by a processor of a client device, causes the processor to perform the operations of:

receiving a packet to be transmitted to a destination over a network socket;

classifying the packet according to an implicit packet service classification provided by a networking layer of the client device or a user-specific packet service classification explicitly specified by an application executed on the client device, the implicit classification having a default traffic classification queue and default scheduler associated therewith and the user-specified classification having a user-specified traffic classification and user-specified scheduler associated therewith; and

enqueuing and scheduling the packet for transmission according to either the default or the user-specific traffic classifications.

26. The machine-readable medium as in claim 25 wherein a packet to be transmitted is stored in one of the queues based on the packet service classifications, and wherein a packet scheduler schedules packets for transmission according to the packet service classifications.

27. The machine-readable medium as in claim 26 wherein one or more applications executed on the client device explicitly classifies packets using one of the packet service classifications and wherein after the classification, the packets to be transmitted for that application are queued in queues associated with those packet service classifications.

28. The machine-readable medium as in claim 26 wherein N packet service classes are mapped to M transmit queues, wherein N is greater than or equal to M.

29. The machine-readable medium as in claim 25 wherein each packet service classification has a different relative priority associated therewith.

30. The machine-readable medium as in claim 29 wherein network control packets are assigned to a packet service classification having the highest relative priority level.

31. The machine-readable medium as in claim 26 further comprising a network driver layer in communication with the networking layer, wherein when a network packet is ready to be transmitted from a particular queue, the networking layer notifies the driver layer which then dequeues the packet from the queue and transmits the packet over the network.

32. The machine-readable medium as in claim 26 wherein packet service classifications are based on one or more of a delay tolerance level specifying how tolerant an application is to packet delay, a loss tolerance level specifying how tolerant an application is to packet loss, and an elasticity of flow level specifying how tolerant an application is to changes in bandwidth.

33. The machine-readable medium as in claim 32 wherein packet service classifications having relatively lower delay tolerance level associated therewith are given relatively higher priority compared with packet service classifications having relatively higher delay tolerance levels.

34. The machine-readable medium as in claim 32 wherein packet service classifications having relatively lower loss tolerance associated therewith are given relatively higher priority compared with packet service classifications having relatively higher loss tolerance.

35. The machine-readable medium as in claim 32 wherein packet service classifications having relatively lower elasticity of bandwidth associated therewith are given relatively higher priority compared with packet service classifications having relatively higher elasticity of bandwidth.

36. The machine-readable medium as in claim 32 wherein one or more of the following packet service classifications are used:

background system-initiated;

background;

best effort;

responsive data;

operations, administration, and management;

multimedia audio/video streaming;

responsive multimedia audio/video;

interactive video;

interactive audio; and

network control.

37. The machine-readable medium as in claim 26 further comprising:

determining features which need to be enabled for the network socket, based on the characteristics of the corresponding service classifications.

38. The machine-readable medium as in claim 37 wherein one of the features comprises opportunistic transmit behavior.

39. The machine-readable medium as in claim 37 wherein one of the features comprises TCP Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT) congestion control on transmit and/or TCP IP Packet Delay Variation (IPDV) on receive.

40. The machine-readable medium as in claim 37 wherein one of the features comprises TCP Large Receive Offload (LRO) on receive.

41. The machine-readable medium as in claim 26 further comprising:

performing one or more opportunistic operations during voice call including suspending certain queues associated with certain packet service classifications.

42. The machine-readable medium as in claim 41 wherein one of the packet service classifications comprises background system-initiated (BK_SYS) packet service classifications.

43. The machine-readable medium as in claim 42 further comprising:

providing a “

suspend”

event to an application which classifies its socket with a BK_SYS service class.

44. The machine-readable medium as in claim 43 wherein the socket classified with the BK_SYS service class is no longer in a writeable state and any attempts to send packets over the socket result in data being dropped.

45. The machine-readable medium as in claim 44 wherein, when the voice call is ended, the suspension of the queue(s) associated with the BK_SYS service classifications are removed.

46. The machine-readable medium as in claim 45 wherein an application which previously received a “

suspend”

event for its BK_SYS socket receives a “

resume”

event to place the socket in a writable state.

47. The machine-readable medium as in claim 39 wherein TCP LEDBAT and IPDV are used for connections that are willing to yield to other packet traffic and thus are not time critical.

48. The machine-readable medium as in claim 40 wherein TCP LRO is used as a performance optimization such that TCP packets are aggregated up to a limit so that they can all be processed in a batch in a TCP input path.