MERGING MULTICAST ABR AND UNICAST ABR WITH PROGRESSIVE DOWNLOAD ABR IN A CUSTOMER PREMISES DEVICE WITHIN THE SAME VIDEO DELIVERY PIPE

• US 20150288617A1
• Filed: 04/07/2014
• Published: 10/08/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 04/07/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ericsson AB (Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson)
• Original Assignee: Ericsson Television Incorporated (Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson)
• Inventors: Dasher, Charles Hammett, Reynolds, Jennifer Ann, Forsman, Robert Hammond, Phillips, Chris
• Granted Patent: US 9,628,405 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/12 Avoiding congestion; Recovering from congestion
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/801 Real time traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/61 for supporting one-way streaming services, e.g. Internet radio
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/23439 for generating different versions
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2402 Monitoring of the downstream path of the transmission network, e.g. bandwidth available traffic monitoring in data switching networks H04L43/00; monitoring data switching networks utilization H04L43/0876
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2662 Controlling the complexity of the video stream, e.g. by scaling the resolution or bitrate of the video stream based on the client capabilities
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44209 Monitoring of downstream path of the transmission network originating from a server, e.g. bandwidth variations of a wireless network arrangements for maintenance or administration in data switching networks involving bandwidth and capacity management H04L41/0896
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6125 involving transmission via Internet transmission by internet of broadcast information H04H60/82
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8456 by decomposing the content in the time domain, e.g. in time segments

Abstract

A method of managing bandwidth allocation across a video pipe that delivers both streaming adaptive bitrate (ABR) content and progressive download ABR content includes receiving a designation of a congestion boundary within a video pipe, the congestion boundary designating a first percentage of the video pipe that is to be used for streaming ABR content when congestion exists on both sides of the congestion boundary, wherein a remaining percentage of the video pipe is to be used for progressive download ABR; allocating bandwidth for streaming ABR content, wherein the gateway device can allocate for streaming content only that portion of the remaining percentage of bandwidth that is not requested for progressive download content; and allocating bandwidth for progressive download content, wherein the gateway device can allocate for progressive download content only that portion of the first percentage of bandwidth that is not requested for streaming content.

Claims

1. A method, performed by a gateway device, of managing bandwidth allocation across a video pipe that delivers both streaming adaptive bitrate (ABR) content and progressive download ABR content, the method comprising:

receiving a designation of a congestion boundary within a video pipe serving the premises associated with the gateway device, the congestion boundary designating a first percentage of the video pipe that is to be used for streaming ABR content when congestion exists on both sides of the congestion boundary, wherein a remaining percentage of the video pipe is to be used for progressive download ABR;

allocating bandwidth for streaming ABR content, wherein the gateway device can allocate for streaming content only that portion of the remaining percentage of bandwidth that is not requested for progressive download content; and

allocating bandwidth for progressive download content, wherein the gateway device can allocate for progressive download content only that portion of the first percentage of bandwidth that is not requested for streaming content.

2. A method for allocating bandwidth within a dynamic streaming pipe for multicast adaptive bitrate (MABR) and unicast adaptive bitrate (UABR) streams, the method comprising:

responsive to a change in requested streams, modelling streaming pipe allocations for a given amount of streaming bandwidth using a list of clients and respective priorities, determining a composite device priority (CDP) to all requested streams, generating a requested streaming list associated with streaming clients for the modeled streaming pipe, and sorting the requested streaming list by CDP in descending order;

for each stream in the requested streaming list, determining whether the lowest bitrate associated with the stream will fit into the modeled pipe and if the lowest bitrate will fit into the modeled pipe, adding the stream to a list of applied streams along with a weight associated with the CDP for the stream and otherwise adding the channel to a skipped stream list;

computing an inadequacy metric for each stream in the list of applied streams using the respective weight and assigned bitrate and sorting the list of applied streams by inadequacy metric in descending order;

for each stream in the sorted list of applied streams, determining whether the stream can upgrade to a next highest bitrate using the given amount of streaming bandwidth and if the stream can upgrade to the next highest bitrate, changing the bitrate for the stream to the next highest bitrate and returning to the computing step; and

once all bitrates are determined, for each stream in the list of applied streams, if the stream is MABR and the stream is not currently connected to a correct Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) group, performing an IGMP join to the determined channel multicast bitrate and if the stream is UABR and the stream needs to change streaming bitrate, requesting a new unicast streaming bitrate from the content distribution network (CDN) edge streamer.

3. The method as recited in claim 2 wherein determining the CDP for a requested stream comprises determining a highest priority device that is requesting the stream and using the priority of the determined device as the priority of the stream.

4. The method as recited in claim 2 wherein the inadequacy metric for a channel is calculated by dividing the weight for the channel by a current bandwidth allocation for the channel.

5. The method as recited in claim 2 further comprising:

for each stream in the skipped stream list, if the stream is an MABR stream and the requesting client is a progressive download client, sending the client to allocation for ABR progressive download and applying conflict bandwidth management in the allocation for ABR progressive download.

6. The method as recited in claim 2 further comprising:

for each stream in the skipped stream list, if the stream is a UABR stream or else the stream is an MABR stream and the requesting client is a streaming client, notifying the client that no bandwidth is available to serve the client.

7. A method of synchronizing multicast adaptive bitrate (MABR) delivery of a requested channel and progressive download adaptive bitrate (ABR) delivery of the requested channel from a premises gateway to user devices, the method comprising:

responsive to determining that a requested video session is for MABR content on a requested channel, the premises gateway receiving a location of a content delivery network (CDN) from a back office and requesting a video session manifest for the requested channel from the CDN;

if the client is a progressive download client, delivering a copy of the video session manifest to the progressive download ABR client whereby the progressive download ABR client can begin pulling video segments;

if the client is not a progressive download client and if the requested channel is not already being watched at a premises served by the premises gateway, the premises gateway receiving the video session manifest for the requested channel and joining an MABR multicast for the requested channel, wherein the video session manifest and the MABR multicast both access content from a single multicast segmenter; and

if the client is not a progressive download client, delivering a combined segmented stream from the MABR multicast for the requested channel to the client.

8. The method of claim 7 further comprising;

retaining a copy of the video session manifest for the requested channel;

the premises gateway receiving a request from the progressive download ABR client to pull segments and determining the requested segment using the retained copy of the video session manifest;

if the requested segments exist in a cache in the premises gateway, hijacking the request and delivering the requested segments from the cache; and

if the requested segments do not exist in the cache in the premises gateway, forwarding the request to the CDN and delivering the requested segments from the requested location.

10. The method of claim 7 wherein the premises gateway joins the MABR multicast at a bitrate calculated to fit into a percentage of a premises video pipe dedicated to streaming.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the premises gateway adjusts the flow of delivery of packets to the progressive download ABR client to cause the progressive download ABR client to change bitrates in order to fit the bandwidth delivered within a percentage of a premises video pipe dedicated to progressive download clients.

12. The method of claim 7 further comprising, responsive to receiving the request for a video session from a client device, retrieving a device and content policy from a policy manager.

13. The method of claim 12 further comprising, if no ABR session with the gateway currently exists, retrieving ABR pipe policies from the policy manager.

9. The method of claim further comprising:

altering the video session manifest prior to sending a copy of the video session manifest to the client;

the premises gateway receiving a request from the progressive download ABR client to pull segments and delivering the segments from a requested location.

14. A method of synchronizing multicast adaptive bitrate (MABR) and progressive download adaptive bitrate (ABR) of a requested channel for delivery to a client gateway, the method comprising:

on receiving a request for a video session manifest for the requested channel from the gateway device, determining at a content delivery node whether the content delivery node is currently ingesting ABR segments from a multicast segmenter for the channel;

if the content delivery node is not currently ingesting ABR segments for the channel, requesting multicast address and ports associated with the channel from a back office, performing a multicast join to an ABR segmented multicast for all encoded segment bitrates for the requested channel and generating the video session manifest, wherein the content delivery node joins the multicast from a multicast segmenter from which streaming clients will receive their streams; and

sending the video session manifest to the client gateway, wherein the client gateway is operable to join an MABR multicast of the channel.

15. A premises gateway device comprising:

a streaming server comprising a streaming processor coupled to receive multicast adaptive bitrate (MABR) segments and un-segmented unicast adaptive bitrate (UABR) streams, a segment combiner coupled to receive the segmented MABR segments and to provide a combined stream from the segmented MABR segments, a bandwidth allocation module, and an adaptive bitrate (ABR) manifest modifier;

a hypertext transport protocol (HTTP) server comprising a processor coupled to receive ABR segments and to send the ABR segments to a progressive download ABR client.

16. The premises gateway device of claim 15 wherein the premises gateway device is coupled to perform the actions:

receiving a designation of a congestion boundary within a video pipe serving the premises associated with the gateway device, the congestion boundary designating a first percentage of the video pipe that is to be used for streaming ABR content when congestion exists on both sides of the congestion boundary, wherein a remaining percentage of the video pipe is to be used for progressive download ABR;

allocating bandwidth for streaming ABR content, wherein the gateway device can allocate for streaming content only that portion of the remaining percentage of bandwidth that is not requested for progressive download content; and

allocating bandwidth for progressive download content, wherein the gateway device can allocate for progressive download content only that portion of the first percentage of bandwidth that is not requested for streaming content.

17. The premises gateway device of claim 16 wherein the bandwidth allocation module of the streaming server is coupled to perform the actions:

responsive to a change in requested streams, modelling streaming pipe allocations for a given amount of streaming bandwidth using a list of clients and respective priorities, determining a composite device priority (CDP) to all requested streams, generating a requested streaming list associated with streaming clients for the modeled streaming pipe, and sorting the requested streaming list by CDP in descending order;

for each stream in the requested streaming list, determining whether the lowest bitrate associated with the stream will fit into the modeled pipe and if the lowest bitrate will fit into the modeled pipe, adding the stream to a list of applied streams along with a weight associated with the CDP for the stream and otherwise adding the channel to a skipped stream list;

computing an inadequacy metric for each stream in the list of applied streams using the respective weight and assigned bitrate and sorting the list of applied streams by inadequacy metric in descending order;

for each stream in the sorted list of applied streams, determining whether the stream can upgrade to a next highest bitrate using the given amount of streaming bandwidth and if the stream can upgrade to the next highest bitrate, changing the bitrate for the stream to the next highest bitrate and returning to the computing step; and

once all bitrates are determined, for each stream in the list of applied streams, if the stream is MABR and the stream is not currently connected to a correct Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) group, performing an IGMP join to the determined channel multicast bitrate and if the stream is UABR and the stream needs to change streaming bitrate, requesting a new unicast streaming bitrate from the content distribution network (CDN) edge streamer.

18. The premises gateway device of claim 17 wherein the HTTP server further comprises a bitrate forecasting module.

19. The premises gateway device of claim 18 further comprising

the streaming server caching MABR segments received for a first channel at a given bitrate;

and

if a progressive download ABR client requests ABR segment for the first channel at the given bitrate, the streaming server provides the cached MABR segments to the progressive download client via the HTTP server.