Classifications

• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L12/00—Data switching networks
  • H04L12/02—Details
  • H04L12/16—Arrangements for providing special services to substations
  • H04L12/18—Arrangements for providing special services to substations for broadcast or conference, e.g. multicast
  • H04L12/185—Arrangements for providing special services to substations for broadcast or conference, e.g. multicast with management of multicast group membership
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L12/00—Data switching networks
  • H04L12/02—Details
  • H04L12/16—Arrangements for providing special services to substations
  • H04L12/18—Arrangements for providing special services to substations for broadcast or conference, e.g. multicast
  • H04L12/1863—Arrangements for providing special services to substations for broadcast or conference, e.g. multicast comprising mechanisms for improved reliability, e.g. status reports
  • H04L12/1877—Measures taken prior to transmission
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L47/00—Traffic control in data switching networks
  • H04L47/10—Flow control; Congestion control
  • H04L47/11—Identifying congestion
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L47/00—Traffic control in data switching networks
  • H04L47/10—Flow control; Congestion control
  • H04L47/15—Flow control; Congestion control in relation to multipoint traffic
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L47/00—Traffic control in data switching networks
  • H04L47/70—Admission control; Resource allocation
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L47/00—Traffic control in data switching networks
  • H04L47/70—Admission control; Resource allocation
  • H04L47/74—Admission control; Resource allocation measures in reaction to resource unavailability
  • H04L47/748—Negotiation of resources, e.g. modification of a request
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L47/00—Traffic control in data switching networks
  • H04L47/70—Admission control; Resource allocation
  • H04L47/80—Actions related to the user profile or the type of traffic
  • H04L47/806—Broadcast or multicast traffic
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L43/00—Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks
  • H04L43/08—Monitoring or testing based on specific metrics, e.g. QoS, energy consumption or environmental parameters
  • H04L43/0876—Network utilisation, e.g. volume of load or congestion level
  • H04L43/0882—Utilisation of link capacity

Definitions

• the present invention relates to the field of Information and Communication Technologies.
• the present invention relates more particularly to a mechanism for managing receiver / decoder connections.
• the present invention relates to the case in which multiple receivers / set-top boxes (STBs) in English language, are associated with an ADSL gateway ("Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line” or “Digital Subscriber Line Flow”). asymmetrical ").
• a mechanism for refusing the connection of a receiver / decoder to a multicast stream if the ADSL bandwidth used by the streams sent to the other receivers / decoders is too large, must be implemented.
• One solution could be for the gateway to "spy" on the Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) packets sent by each receiver / decoder, then, using the service plan describing the characteristics of each stream, calculate the total bandwidth used.
• IGMP Internet Group Management Protocol
• a receiver / decoder To receive a multicast stream, a receiver / decoder must send an IGMP "join" packet in multicast. This packet is echoed along the multicast router chain for one router to direct the requested stream to the port of another router where the request was received. No acknowledgment to this "join" packet is sent back to the receiver / decoder.
• the gateway decides to intercept this IGMP packet and block it so as not to overload the bandwidth, there is no way to indicate the lack of flow to the receiver / decoder.
• the TV screen remains black.
• a communication system in one embodiment, includes receivers / decoders that have the ability to observe the subnet to which they are coupled.
• a multicast router couples one or more group (s), such as groups of video programs, to the receivers / decoders as requested by the receivers / decoders.
• a receiver / decoder leaves a first group, for example, and thus sends a "leave" message to the router, the other (or the other) receiver (s) / decoder (s) know (know) that it (s) ) must send a join message if they are subscribed to this first group. Thus, the router knows immediately that it must couple this first group to the subnet.
• the present invention intends to overcome the drawbacks of the prior art by proposing a solution to prevent the screen remains black, when no flow is transmitted to the receiver / decoder, in the case where the bandwidth would risk to be overloaded.
• the present invention relates, in its most general sense, to a communication device, connected on the one hand to a communication network and on the other hand to at least one receiver / decoder, characterized in that it comprises selection means between the following different possibilities, according to the bandwidth available on the communication network, on receipt of a request from said receiver / decoder:
• said device further comprises means for operating a service plan containing all the multicast addresses and at least one characteristic of the corresponding streams, for example the name of the program, the codes used or the bandwidth used.
• said device further comprises means for operating a table of the streams being received on each of the receivers / decoders connected to said communication device, said request being established from viewed IGMP requests.
• said device comprises means for calculating the bandwidth of the communication network used and means for calculating the bandwidth of the communication network required by receiving a new on-demand stream of a new IGMP request, from the service plan and the flow table.
• said device is compatible ADSL ("Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line").
• said device has in a configuration table a URL ("uniform resource locator") and comprises means for recovering said preconfigured multimedia file from said URL and means for transmitting said multimedia file to said streamed receiver / decoder multicast and loop.
• the multimedia file is retrieved from said URL using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
• said device comprises means for formatting said multimedia file.
• the multimedia file may include video, animations and / or a voice message.
• said device comprises modulation and demodulation means.
• the present invention also relates to a communication method implementing a communication device, connected on the one hand to a communication network and on the other hand to at least one receiver / decoder, characterized in that it comprises a step of selecting between the following different possibilities, according to the bandwidth available on the communication network, upon receipt of a request from said receiver / decoder:
• said method further comprises a step of operating a service plan containing all the multicast addresses and at least one characteristic of the corresponding streams, for example the name of the program, the codes used or the bandwidth used.
• the method furthermore comprises a step of exploiting a table of the streams being reception on each of the receivers / decoders connected to said communication device, said request being established from viewed IGMP requests.
• said method further comprises a step of calculating the bandwidth of the communication network used and a step of calculating the bandwidth of the communication network required by receiving a new stream on request of a new IGMP query, from the service plan and the flow table.
• said communication device has in a configuration table a URL ("uniforrn resource locator") and said method includes a step of recovering said preconfigured multimedia file from said URL and a step of transmitting said multimedia file to the said Receiver / decoder in multicast and loop flow.
• a URL uniforrn resource locator
• HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol
• HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol
• MPEG Moving Picture Experts Group
• FIGS 1 and 3 illustrate an embodiment of the method according to the present invention
• FIG. 2 illustrates the communication device according to the present invention.
• Figure 4 illustrates an IGMP packet.
• the communication device (or residential gateway) (1) shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, comprises:
• An interface (15) to an external communication network, for example a DSL interface, or an interface to a fiber optic network;
• a plurality of Ethernet interfaces (21, 22, 23, 24).
• the communication device retrieves a "service plan" containing all the multicast addresses and the characteristics of the corresponding streams (program name, coded and bandwidth used).
• the communication device maintains, from viewed IGMP requests, a table of the streams being received. From this table and the service plan, it calculates the bandwidth used, as well as the additional bandwidth required by a new IGMP request. From the bandwidth (for example ADSL) available, the communication device decides whether this request should be transmitted without modification, redirected to a stream of inferior quality, or refused by broadcasting a preconfigured multimedia file.
• the service plan reflects the available offer on the network so as to address a park of several decoders in the residence of the user.
• the offer may be different per user but the IP address: Port is unique per service.
• the list of parameters associated with each service may change depending on the needs on the gateway.
• the service plan provided to the gateway has the following form: Service Name, IP Address: Service Port, Video Encoding Type, Audio Encoding Type, Stream Throughput Kbit / s service.
• the gateway needs to know the type of video codec and possibly audio, if a sound message is presented to the user, so as to transmit information in the correct coding format.
• the gateway does not know the capacity of the decoder that calls it but the assumption can be made that a decoder does not request a stream that only corresponds to its decoding capacity.
• the service plan is not necessarily in the form of a table.
• the IGMP protocol transiting between the set-top boxes and the IGMP switches allows the gateway (for example ADSL) to know for all the equipment of its network those who subscribe to these streams, to build the table of flows being received.
• the gateway for example ADSL
• This flow table includes in parameter an IP address corresponding to that of the stream to be received associated with a recipient receiver address.
• a flow table is therefore a list of source stream IP address pair and associated recipient IP address pair.
• Table 1 sample flow table
• the flow table is not necessarily in the form of a table.
• the gateway upon receipt of a request from said receiver / decoder, can modify the request to request a flow of lesser quality.
• a description of changes made to IGMP packets is given here.
• IGMP is defined by RFC 2236.
• An IGMP packet is formed of 8 bytes, and is in the form shown in Figure 4.
• Max Resp Time describes the value of a timer used in state machines implementing the protocol
• Group Address is the multicast address of the group you want to subscribe to or want to leave
• the gateway has resources to modify IGMP requests received from the STB before transmitting them to the AN.
• the "Group Address" field of the Type Membership Report (0x16) command is modified from the service table.
• requests received from the Membership Query access network will be sent with the changed Group Address field to the STB.
• the gateway may not transmit the IGMP request to the access network, and itself produce a video stream, possibly representing a still image, which it will transmit to the STB in the form of multicast packets.
• the residential gateway represented in FIG. 1, has in its configuration table a URL ("uniform resource locator") to which a video file is retrieved by HTTP.
• This video file after formatting, is sent to the STB by the gateway as a multicast stream, loop.
• ADSL bandwidth is not used during the loop broadcast.
• This file contains information explaining to the user the reason for the non-broadcast of the requested channel (for example: "The ADSL subscription you have does not allow you to simultaneously view 2 High Definition streams. go to hc tp: // www ozange-ft. corner "). It could also contain animations, because it is a video file, as well as a voice message.
• the recovery of the "service plan" allows the communication device to know the audio and video codecs used for each multicast address and thus to send a preconfigured multimedia file encoded in the same way.
• the invention is described in the foregoing by way of example. It is understood that the skilled person is able to realize different variants of the invention without departing from the scope of the patent.

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• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Computer Networks & Wireless Communication (AREA)
• Signal Processing (AREA)
• Environmental & Geological Engineering (AREA)
• Data Exchanges In Wide-Area Networks (AREA)
• Two-Way Televisions, Distribution Of Moving Picture Or The Like (AREA)
• Communication Control (AREA)

Applications Claiming Priority (3)

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• 2007
  • 2007-08-17 US US12/310,300 patent/US20100002779A1/en not_active Abandoned
  • 2007-08-17 EP EP07823727A patent/EP2055042A2/de not_active Withdrawn
  • 2007-08-17 KR KR1020097002812A patent/KR101375182B1/ko active Active
  • 2007-08-17 WO PCT/FR2007/051827 patent/WO2008023130A2/fr not_active Ceased
  • 2007-08-17 JP JP2009525091A patent/JP5122568B2/ja not_active Expired - Fee Related

Non-Patent Citations (1)

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