Network bandwith regulation using traffic scheduling

• US 9,577,899 B2
• Filed: 01/20/2015
• Issued: 02/21/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 10/25/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Fourthwall Media Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Fourthwall Media Incorporated
• Inventors: Slothouber, Louis P.
• Primary Examiner(s): Mui, Gary
• Application Number:
  US14/600,569
• Publication Number:
  US 20150207707A1
• Time in Patent Office: 763 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0896 Bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities flow or congestion control using dynamic resource allocation, e.g. in-call renegotiation, H04L47/76
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/147 for predicting network behaviour
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/062 related to network traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0882 Utilisation of link capacity
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/12 Avoiding congestion; Recovering from congestion
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/196 Integration of transport layer protocols, e.g. TCP and UDP
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/28 in relation to timing considerations
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/781 Centralised allocation of resources
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/801 Real time traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/822 Collecting or measuring resource availability data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/83 based on usage prediction

Abstract

Disclosed herein are systems and methods for regulating network bandwidth by means of monitoring network traffic, predicting network loads, and scheduling traffic utilizing traffic reporting and bandwidth reservation mechanisms. These systems and methods may reduce network congestion and support more efficient processing by network applications. Traffic reporting may comprise broadcasting control messages to network nodes indicating appropriate times to send and receive messages. Network nodes may use traffic reports (e.g., control messages) to proactively regulate their use of the network. Bandwidth reservation may allow network nodes to do productive processing while waiting to send and receive data, and may decrease mean wait times. Reservations may be implemented in a synchronous or asynchronous manner. In an exemplary embodiment, the reservation mechanism may emulate a traditional stream socket API. Embodiments enabling enhanced TV applications to run more effectively over cable TV out-of-band networks are described.

Claims

1. A method for regulating communication network bandwidth, the method comprising:

monitoring data traffic over a network using a centralized traffic management server, wherein the traffic management server continuously monitors a sample of incoming packets sent by at least one client node;

predicting network loads, wherein the traffic management server computes a load information based on a frequency, a rate of change, and a content of the sample of incoming packets;

setting a send-probability value in response to network traffic conditions on the traffic management server;

transmitting the send-probability value from the traffic management server to the at least one client node in a first information packet;

utilizing the send-probability value at the at least one client node to compute a randomized data transmission time;

transmitting a data packet by the at least one client node at the computed randomized data transmission time;

receiving the data packet at the traffic management server; and

generating and sending a second information packet by the traffic management server to the at least one client nodes, wherein the second information packet provides a new send-probability value for a next transmission.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the second information packet is sent if at least 10 seconds have passed since the first information packet was broadcast.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the second information packet is sent if at least 0.5 seconds have passed since the first information packet was sent and the data packet was received out of order.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the second information packet is sent if 0.5 seconds have passed since the first information packet was sent and the rate of packets per second detected by the traffic management server is increasing.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the network is an interactive digital cable television network.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the cable television network comprises an enhanced television platform server communicating via an out-of-band channel using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) over User Datagram Protocol (UDP) with a plurality of set-top boxes.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the set-top boxes run interactive applications implemented using the Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF) running on an EBIF user agent.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the traffic comprises at least one of:

interactive application communication, voting and polling data, television usage data, user preference and statistics traffic, and t-commerce information.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the network is an in-band cable television, DSL, or mobile broadband network.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the network utilizes User Datagram Protocol (UDP) or Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the traffic management server serves as a UDP-to-TCP relay server converting at least one UDP packet comprising traffic management information into at least one TCP packet.