Allocation of resources for real-time communication

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10425351-B2
Application number	US-201315034421-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 8, 2013
Priority date	Nov 8, 2013
Publication date	Sep 24, 2019
Grant date	Sep 24, 2019

Abstract

There is provided mechanism for providing Web based applications with network information. A need for a Web based application to transmit a real time media flow is acquired. Transport characteristics relating to transmission of the real time media flow over a communications network is acquired. From the acquired transport characteristics and according to a policy criterion a resource allocation to the real time media flow is determined. The determined resource allocation is provided to at least one of the Web based application and a browser associated with the Web based application.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A real-time communication (RTC) helper server for providing a Web-based application run by a user equipment with network information and for supporting said Web-based application and a browser of said user equipment and for said Web-based application and said browser to find and connect to each other, the RTC helper server comprising a processing unit and a storage medium, said storage medium comprising instructions configured for execution by the processing unit and configured so as to cause the processing unit, during execution of the instructions, to:
acquire a need for said Web-based application to transmit a real time media flow;
acquire transport characteristics relating to transmission of said real time media flow over a communications network;
determine, from said acquired transport characteristics and according to a policy criterion, a resource allocation to said real time media flow; and
provide said determined resource allocation to at least one of the Web-based application and said browser;

wherein the instructions are further configured so that the processing unit is operable to perform any one or more of the following:
to trigger reconfiguration of said Web-based application based on said policy criterion;
to trigger, based on said policy criterion, reconfiguration of transport links on which said real time media flow is transported; and
to configure transmission properties of the user equipment for transmission of said real time media flow.

2. The RTC helper server of claim 1 , wherein said resource allocation is an available bitrate for transmission of said real time media flow.

3. The RTC helper server of claim 1 , wherein said communications network is a mobile broadband communications network.

4. The RTC helper server of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are further configured to cause the processing unit to:
identify communications sessions associated with said transmission of said real time media flow; and
acquire said transport characteristics for said communications sessions associated with said communications sessions.

5. The RTC helper server of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are further configured to cause the processing unit to:
determine said acquired transport characteristics to be below a predetermined quality value as set by said policy criterion; and,
as a result thereof, dispatch an event to an error handler.

6. The RTC helper server of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are configured to cause the processing unit to trigger said reconfiguration of said Web-based application based on said policy criterion.

7. The RTC helper server of claim 1 , wherein the in instructions are configured to cause the processing unit to trigger said reconfiguration of said transport links, based on said policy criterion.

8. The RTC helper server of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are configured to cause the processing unit to configure said transmission properties of the user equipment for transmission of said real time media flow.

9. The RTC helper server of claim 8 , wherein said transmission properties comprises any of media encoding mode, media packetization mode, packet sizes, burst sizes, frame resolution setting, frame rate setting, priority tagging of individual media frames, enabling and disabling forward error correction, enabling and disabling packet retransmission.

10. The RTC helper server of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are further configured to cause the processing unit to:
acquire information relating to a change of transport usage for an individual traffic flow of said real time media flow; and
provide said information to at least one of the Web-based application and said browser.

11. The RTC helper server of claim 10 , wherein said information relates to at least one of differentiated services code point, DSCP, an initial bandwidth, and a maximum allowed bandwidth of said individual traffic flow.

12. The RTC helper server of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are further configured to cause the processing unit to instruct at least one of said Web-based application and said browser to comply with said resource allocation.

13. The RTC helper server of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are further configured to cause the processing unit to determine whether to provide said determined resource allocation as a recommendation or as an instruction to comply with.

14. The RTC helper server of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are further configured to cause the processing unit to acquire configuration information for said Web-based application from a policy server.

15. The RTC helper server of claim 14 , wherein said configuration information comprises session initialization information.

16. The RTC helper server of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are further configured to cause the processing unit to acquire said policy criterion from a policy server.

17. The RTC helper server of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are further configured to cause the processing unit to acquire network information from a network information system.

18. The RTC helper server of claim 17 , wherein the instructions are further configured to cause the processing unit to acquire a time indicator from said network information system, the time indicator indicating a time interval from reception of said network information to usage of said network information by at least one of the Web-based application and said browser.

19. A method, performed by a real-time communication (RTC) helper server, for providing a Web-based application run by a user equipment with network information and for supporting said Web-based application and a browser of said user equipment and for said Web-based application and said browser to find and connect to each other, the method comprising:
acquiring a need for said Web-based application to transmit a real time media flow;
acquiring transport characteristics relating to transmission of said real time media flow over a communications network;
determining, from said acquired transport characteristics and according to a policy criterion, a resource allocation to said real time media flow; and
providing said determined resource allocation to at least one of the Web-based application and said browser;

wherein the method further comprises any one or more of any of the following:
triggering reconfiguration of said Web-based application based on said policy criterion;
triggering, based on said policy criterion, reconfiguration of transport links on which said real time media flow is transported; and
configuring transmission properties of the user equipment for transmission of said real time media flow.

20. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising, stored thereupon, a computer program for providing a Web-based application run by a user equipment with network information and for supporting said Web-based application and a browser of said user equipment and for said Web-based application and said browser to find and connect to each other, the computer program comprising computer program code configured to cause a real-time communication (RTC) helper server executing the computer program code to:
acquire a need for said Web-based application to transmit a real time media flow;
acquire transport characteristics relating to transmission of said real time media flow over a communications network;
determine, from said acquired transport characteristics and according to a policy criterion, a resource allocation

Assignees

• Ericsson Telefon Ab L M

Inventors

• Eriksson Göran
• Andersson Markus
• Burman Bo
• Westerlund Magnus

Classifications

• H04W72/543

  based on requested quality, e.g. QoS · CPC title

• H04L65/80

  Responding to QoS · CPC title

• H04L41/5019

  Ensuring fulfilment of SLA · CPC title

• H04L47/781

  Centralised allocation of resources · CPC title

• H04L65/1063

  Application servers providing network services (systems providing special services to telephonic subscribers H04M3/42) · CPC title