System and Method of Implementing Quality of Service over a Packet-Based Network

• US 20140105036A1
• Filed: 10/15/2012
• Published: 04/17/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 10/15/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Anschutz, Thomas
• Granted Patent: US 9,438,483 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/252
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0057 Block codes H04L1/0061, H04L1/0064 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0076 Distributed coding, e.g. network coding, involving channel coding coding in both space and time H04L1/0618; cooperative diversity H04B7/022
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1819 with retransmission of additional or different redundancy
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/203 Details of error rate determination, e.g. BER, FER or WER
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5009 Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5019 Ensuring fulfilment of SLA
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0835 One way packet loss
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/613 for the control of the source by the destination control signals issued by the client directed to the server or network components specially adapted for selective content distribution H04N21/637
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/80 Responding to QoS

Abstract

A method includes, at a first network endpoint, determining whether a second network endpoint supports receipt of a stream of packets having a quality of service indicator. The method further includes, at the first network endpoint, in response to determining that the second network endpoint supports receipt of the stream of packets having the quality of service indicator, generating and sending the stream of packets having the quality of service indicator and including forward error correction data to the second network endpoint.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving, at a second network endpoint, a stream of packets from a first network endpoint, the stream of packets including a quality of service indicator and forward error correction information, wherein at least one packet of the stream of packets is not received at the second endpoint; and

at the second endpoint, in response to detecting that the at least one packet of the stream of packets is not received and based on the quality of service indicator, initiating a forward error correction decode operation to recover data of the at least one packet of the stream of packets by use of the forward error correction information.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

monitoring the stream of packets to determine a packet loss rate;

comparing the packet loss rate to an error tolerance based on the quality of service indicator; and

in response to the packet loss rate exceeding the error tolerance, reporting a packet loss and sending a retransmit message.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the stream of packets is received at the second network endpoint via a transport layer of an interne protocol suite.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the stream of packets is associated with a transmission control protocol session.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the transport layer includes a quality of service layer.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the quality of service layer is associated with a first port of the first network endpoint and with a second port of the second network endpoint, and wherein the stream of packets is received at the second port of the second network endpoint.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein the quality of service layer is incorporated into a stack of an operating system associated with the first network endpoint.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the quality of service indicator is associated with an expedited forwarding service level.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the quality of service indicator is associated with an assured forwarding service level.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the quality of service indicator is associated with a best effort service level.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving, at the second network endpoint, another stream of packets having a second quality of service indicator and including second forward error correction information from the first network endpoint, wherein at least a portion of the stream of packets is received at the second network endpoint concurrently with at least a portion of the other stream of packets, wherein at least one packet of the other stream of packets is not received at the second endpoint; and

in response to detecting that the at least one packet of the other stream of packets is not received at the second network endpoint and based on the second quality of service indicator, initiating a second forward error correction decode operation to recover data of the at least one packet of the other stream of packets that is not received by use of the second forward error correction information.

12. A method comprising:

at a first network endpoint, determining whether a second network endpoint supports receipt of a stream of packets having a quality of service indicator; and

at the first network endpoint, in response to determining that the second network endpoint supports receipt of the stream of packets having the quality of service indicator, generating and sending the stream of packets to the second network endpoint, the stream of packets including the quality of service indicator and forward error correction data.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the stream of packets is sent to the second endpoint via a transport layer of an internet protocol suite.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the stream of packets is associated with a transmission control protocol session.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the transport layer includes a quality of service layer.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the quality of service layer is associated with a first port of the first network endpoint and with a second port of the second network endpoint, and wherein the stream of packets is sent from the first network endpoint via the first port to the second port of the second network endpoint.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein the quality of service layer is incorporated into a stack of an operating system associated with the first network endpoint.

18. An apparatus comprising:

a processor; and

a memory accessible to the processor, wherein the memory includes instructions executable by the processor to;

at a first network endpoint, determine whether a second network endpoint supports receipt of a stream of packets having a quality of service indicator; and

at the first network endpoint, in response to determining that the second network endpoint supports receipt of the stream of packets having the quality of service indicator, generate and send the stream of packets having the quality of service indicator and including forward error correction data to the second network endpoint.

19. The apparatus of claim 18, wherein the stream of packets is received at the second network endpoint via a transport layer of an internet protocol suite, wherein the transport layer includes a quality of service layer.

20. The apparatus of claim 18, wherein the stream of packets is received at the second network endpoint via a transport layer of an internet protocol suite, wherein the transport layer includes a quality of service layer, and wherein the quality of service layer is incorporated into a stack of an operating system that is associated with the first network endpoint.