Method and apparatus for concatenating and piggybacking data packets

• US 7,319,666 B2
• Filed: 01/09/2003
• Issued: 01/15/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 02/06/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: InterDigital Patent Holdings, Inc. (InterDigital, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Thomson Licensing (Vantiva SA)
• Inventors: Goosman, Todd Foster
• Primary Examiner(s): Pham; Chi
• Assistant Examiner(s): Hyun; Soon D.
• Application Number:
  US10/339,616
• Publication Number:
  US 20030147411A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,832 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 370/230
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/35 by embedding flow control information in regular packets, e.g. piggybacking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/22 Parsing or analysis of headers

Abstract

A method and apparatus for concatenating and piggybacking data packets in a bi-directional communication device include, in response to a first transmission queue of the bi-directional communication device containing less than a threshold number of data packets, transferring a data packet from a second transmission queue in the bi-directional communication device to the first transmission queue, the transferred data packet comprising at least two concatenated data packets. The method and apparatus further include identifying the transferred data packet as a ready-to-send data packet in the first transmission queue after the transfer, and indicating the presence of a subsequent ready-to-send data packet in a primary ready-to-send data packet, the primary ready-to-send data packet and the subsequent ready-to-send data packet existing in a sequence of ready-to-send data packets in the first transmission queue.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

in response to a first transmission queue of a bi-directional communication device containing less than a threshold number of data packets, performing the steps of;

transferring a data packet from a second transmission queue in said bi-directional communication device to said first transmission queue, said transferred data packet comprising at least two concatenated data packets;

identifying said transferred data packet as a ready-to-send data packet in said first transmission queue; and

indicating the presence of a subsequent ready-to-send data packet in a primary ready-to-send data packet, said primary ready-to-send data packet and said subsequent ready-to-send data packet existing in a sequence of ready-to-send data packets in said first transmission queue.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the indication of the presence of the subsequent ready-to-send data packet is inserted into a header of said primary ready-to-send data packet.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said indicating is performed prior to transmitting the primary ready-to-send data packet upstream.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

transmitting said primary ready-to-send data packet upstream toward a control device, the control device for identifying the indication of the presence of the subsequent ready-to-send data packet in the primary ready-to-send data packet; and

receiving a grant for bandwidth for at least the subsequent ready-to-send data packet.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said transferring step is repeated until the number of ready-to-send data packets in said first transmission queue is equal to said threshold number.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

verifying that at least two ready-to-send data packets exist in said first transmission queue prior to said indicating step.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said ready-to-send data packets are data packets having respective ownership bits set to a first state.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein said bi-directional communication device is a cable modem.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein said cable modem comprises a cable modem IC.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein said cable modem IC is a Broadcom 3350 DOCSIS cable modem IC.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein said first transmission queue is a packet descriptor queue in said Broadcom 3350 DOCSIS cable modem IC.

12. The method of claim 8, wherein said second transmission queue is a software queue in said cable modem.

13. An apparatus, comprising:

a first transmission queue, for storing data packets and a first set of instructions;

a second transmission queue for storing data packets over a predetermined threshold number of data packets to be stored in said first transmission queue and a second set of instructions; and

a processor, upon executing said first set of instructions and said second set of instructions, for performing the following steps in response to a first transmission queue containing less than the threshold number of data packets;

transfer a data packet from said second transmission queue to said first transmission queue, said transferred data packet comprising at least two concatenated data packets;

identify said transferred data packet as a ready-to-send data packet in said first transmission queue; and

indicate the presence of a subsequent ready-to-send data packet in a primary ready-to-send data packet, said primary ready-to-send data packet and said subsequent ready-to-send data packet existing in a sequence of ready-to-send data packets in said first transmission queue.

14. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein the indication of the presence of the subsequent ready-to-send data packet is inserted into a header of said primary ready-to-send data packet.

15. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein said bi-directional communication device is a cable modem.

16. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein said cable modem comprises a cable modem IC.

17. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein said cable modem IC is a Broadcom 3350 DOCSIS cable modem IC.

18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein said first transmission queue is a packet descriptor queue in said Broadcom 3350 DOCSIS cable modem IC.

19. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein said second transmission queue is a software queue in said cable modem.