Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer network managing
Reexamination Certificate
1998-10-28
2003-02-11
Barot, Bharat (Department: 2154)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Computer network managing
C709S203000, C709S224000, C709S231000, C709S232000, C709S233000, C709S250000, C370S229000, C370S252000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06519636
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to the field of identifying and controlling packets sent to and received from a networking environment, particularly one or more of the following: the internet, intranet, cable, and any other of packet switching networks. More specifically, the invention relates to a way to control how packets are transmitted from an application to the network and how packets received from the network are passed to the application.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Applications using the Internet for transmission of data and media have huge business opportunities and controlling how information is sent from an application to a network and passed from a network to an application is a critical element. For electronic business it is important that data is manipulated before it is sent to an untrusted network and manipulated after it has left the untrusted network such that one or more of privacy, authenticity and data integrity is assured. For real time information like audio and/or video, it is more important to be able to guarantee an acceptable level of service to make it a successful business. For pervasive computing applications it is critically important that a new class of user machines, such as thin clients and application-specific Tier 0 devices, with widely varying resource capabilities are able to avail of Internet application services without excessive demands on their limited resources.
“Internet Media” transmission includes sending media packets (containing any of the following: n-dimensional images, animation, music, text, movies, video shots, still pictures, voice, data, etc.) over packet switching networks (e.g., a wide area network—WAN—and/or local area network—LAYN) between two or more computers with special application software. Internet Telephony is a particular version of Internet Media where packets contain voice information (and sometimes video information). When the voice processed by an input device is captured at a source computer, an application running on the source computer will transform the continuous voice analog signals into a series of discrete digitally compressed packets. There are some well known industry standards to define this transformation process and the format of these discrete (often digitally compressed) packets, for example, PCM, GSM, G.723, etc.
There are other known processes defined by standards (e.g., IP, UDP, TCP and RTP protocols) to augment the packets with necessary headers and trailers so that these packets can travel over the common packet switching network(s) to a destination computer. With these headers and trailers, packets usually travel over the packet switching network(s) independently. At the destination computer, arriving packets are stored in a buffer and are then transformed back into the form which is close to the original analog signal. The same industry standard (e.g., PCM, GSM, G.723, etc.) defines this transformation.
Enhancing a network transmission over a non trusted network with security features comprises but is not limited to any one or more of the following:
message integrity allows a recipient of a transmission to verify that the contents of the transmission have not been altered by a third party. It usually involves the computation of a Message Authentication Code (MAC) that is computed over the content of the transmission.
privacy guarantees that no unauthorized party can get access to the information. It involves encryption at the sending end and decryption at the receiving end.
authentication allows a recipient of a transmission to verify the ID of the sender.
STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS WITH THE PRIOR ART
Quality is a serious problem in sending media over packet switching networks, including Internet and Intranets. This problem comes from the two general characteristics of packet switching networks, namely: (A) most users are connected to the Internet over a low bandwidth link (e.g. dialup over a phone line to the Internet Service Provider); (B) a large number of users may connect to the Internet using heterogeneous resource-limited machines and devices, e.g., thin clients, handheld devices, set-top boxes, and Web appliances; (C) currently there is no standard that is generally implemented and allows to differentiate priorities of real time traffic from non real time traffic.
Generally, the prior art systems do not control well how packets are transmitted from an application to the network and/or how packets are received from the network and passed to the application. Here control includes but is not limited to the following: controlling the temporal spacing and the temporal frequency of packets, controlling the security features (encryption, message integrity, authentication) of one or more packets. This lack of control causes several problems, among them packet transmission delay.
For two-way Internet media transmission, long delays are fatal and packet losses also have an impact on the quality of the transmission. Delays occur when packets are buffered, which happens usually in routers, where packets from different incoming links arrive at the same time and have to be multiplexed on fewer or slower outgoing links.
One prior art system for reducing delays is describe in RFC 2205 “Resource ReSerVation Protocol”. It defines a protocol to establish a reservation for specific transmission sessions on a given path. This enables routers to give packets belonging to a reserved flow a higher priority. The consequence is that they can be transmitted from one router to the next with little or no queuing. This reduces the delay for such packets significantly. The problem with this prior art system is that it doesn't scale very well, since the router needs to store the priority for all of these sessions. In addition, there is a current lack of a universally accepted policy that restricts everybody from establishing a reservation for a session.
Another prior art system is described in the IETF draft “Differentiated Services”. It defines a more scaleable way to give different priorities to different flows. However, this technique is not yet mature enough to be standardized, let alone to be implemented.
Both of the prior art systems are implemented on network equipment (routers) within the network. Since the Internet is not one homogeneous, centrally administered network but comprises many different networks that are under the administrative control of different organizations, it is currently not possible for an end system to obtain a better than best effort quality over the Internet.
An example of a typical prior art networking system
100
for transmitting real time information, including voice and data, and non real time information, is shown as a block diagram in FIG.
1
. The networking system
100
comprises a plurality of computers (generally
160
) that are connected to one or more networks
130
through well known network connectors such as modems and/or LAN adapters
150
. The computers
160
typically can be any generally known computer system, such as a personal computer (like an IBM ThinkPad) or workstation (like an IBM RS6000), or a device with possibly limited memory and a possibly less powerful central processing unit like a set-top box, a hand held device such as a Palm Pilot, or other Web-based application devices. For a one way communication, one computer
160
would be the source computer
160
S originating the transmission of information and one or more of the computers
160
would be the destination computer
160
D that would receive the information. However, in many applications, both the source computer
160
S and the destination computer
160
D functions are contained in a single computer, e.g.
160
, that can perform both transmission, sending and receiving functions, to enable point to point two way, one to many, and/or many to many communications. The computers
160
will have well known input and output devices like microphones
131
, speakers
132
, keyboards, mice, cameras, video recorders, screens, recorders, music instruments, pen inputs, touch screens (
Barzilai Tsipora P.
Engel Robert
Kandlur Dilip Dinkar
Mehra Ashish
Barot Bharat
Percello Louis J.
Perman & Green LLP
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