Source-aware network shaping

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9559969-B2
Application number	US-201414251471-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 11, 2014
Priority date	Jul 11, 2013
Publication date	Jan 31, 2017
Grant date	Jan 31, 2017

Abstract

Systems and methods are described for source-aware shaping of network traffic in a communications system. Embodiments can manage resource congestion within a communications network by preferentially adjusting certain types of traffic on a per-subscriber and/or per-application basis. For example, a subscriber can receive various types of traffic in respective streams, and the streams can be identified according to whether they carry adaptive traffic. When a congestion condition is detected, one or more of the identified streams can be squeezed or expanded, which can cause an associated content source to automatically adapt communication of the adaptive traffic (e.g., its quality) to the reduced or expanded capacity. Selectively squeezing those streams identified as adaptive can appreciably mitigate congestion, while maintaining a desired level of network performance for the subscriber.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system for network traffic shaping, the system comprising:
a plurality of stream pipes that each operates to carry network traffic of an associated traffic type from a content source to one or more subscriber terminals via a communications network, wherein only a subset of the plurality of stream pipes operates to carry adaptive traffic that is encoded in such a way that automatically adapts to throughput of its stream pipe; and
a gateway, communicatively coupled with the plurality of stream pipes and disposed in the communications network between the content source and the subscriber terminals, the gateway comprising:
a congestion management system that operates to
detect a congestion condition on the communications network; and

a traffic shaping system that is communicatively coupled with the congestion management system and operates to adjust allocation of shared network resources of at least one of the subset of stream pipes in response to detecting the congestion condition.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein:
the communications network comprises a plurality of channels, each comprising at least some of the plurality of stream pipes; and
the congestion management system operates to detect the congestion condition on at least one of the channels of the communications network.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein:
the communications network comprises a plurality of subscriber pipes, each associated with at least a respective one of the subscriber terminals, and each comprising at least one of the plurality of stream pipes; and
the congestion management system operates to detect the congestion condition on at least one of the subscriber pipes of the communications network.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the traffic shaping system operates to adjust allocation of shared network resources of the identified subset of stream pipes without substantially adjusting capacity allocated to other sub-pipes of their respective subscriber pipes.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the traffic shaping system operates to adjust allocation of shared network resources of the identified subset of stream pipes preferentially over adjusting capacity allocated to any other sub-pipes of their respective subscriber pipes.

6. The system of claim 5 , wherein the traffic shaping system operates to adjust allocation of shared network resources of the identified subset of stream pipes prior to adjusting capacity allocated to any other sub-pipes of their respective subscriber pipes.

7. The system of claim 5 , wherein the traffic shaping system operates to adjust allocation of shared network resources of the identified subset of stream pipes at a first rate and to adjust allocation of shared network resources of any other sub-pipes of their respective subscriber pipes at a second rate, the first rate being faster than the second rate.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein the traffic shaping system operates to adjust allocation of shared network resources of the identified subset of stream pipes by adjusting capacity allocated to the identified subset of stream pipes.

9. The system of claim 1 , wherein:
the effective throughput of each stream pipe is one of a plurality of predefined throughput levels defined by a network shaping policy; and
the traffic shaping system operates to adjust allocation of shared network resources of the identified subset of stream pipes by adjusting an effective throughput of each of at least some of the identified stream pipes from its respective present throughput level to a respective other throughput level.

10. The system of claim 9 , wherein the traffic shaping system operates to:
adjust the effective throughput of each identified stream pipe to a next higher or next lower one of the predefined throughput levels.

11. The system of claim 9 , wherein the traffic shaping system operates to:
determine a minimum throughput level according to the network shaping policy; and
adjust the effective throughput of each identified stream pipe to a lower one of the predefined throughput levels only when its respective present throughput level is higher than the minimum throughput level.

12. The system of claim 9 , wherein the traffic shaping system operates to:
determine a target throughput level according to the network shaping policy; and
adjust the effective throughput of each identified stream pipe to the target throughput level.

13. The system of claim 1 , wherein:
each stream pipe is a sub-pipe of a respective one of a plurality of subscriber pipes, each associated with a subscriber terminal;
each subscriber terminal is associated with a subscriber-level network shaping policy; and
the traffic shaping system operates to adjust allocation of shared network resources of the identified subset of stream pipes in accordance with the subscriber-level network shaping policies associated with the respective subscriber pipes.

14. The system of claim 1 , wherein:
each stream pipe is a sub-pipe of a respective one of a plurality of subscriber pipes that has a respective allocated throughput; and
the congestion management system further operates to identify a subset of the plurality of subscriber pipes as presently exceeding their respective allocated throughputs, such that each of the identified subset of stream pipes is a sub-pipe of a respective one of the identified subset of subscriber pipes.

15. The system of claim 14 , wherein the respective allocated throughput of each subscriber pipe is dynamically allocated.

16. The system of claim 9 , wherein the network shaping policy is at least one of a network-level network shaping policy, a subscriber-level network shaping policy, or a subscriber cluster-level network shaping policy.

17. The system of claim 1 , wherein the congestion management system operates to identify the subset of stream pipes as carrying adaptive traffic by:
inspecting traffic traversing the plurality of stream pipes to determine whether the traversing traffic comprises adaptive traffic.

18. The system of claim 1 , wherein:
the plurality of stream pipes comprises adaptive stream pipes that are designated a priori for carrying adaptive traffic; and
the congestion management system operates to identify the subset of stream pipes by identifying at least some of the adaptive stream pipes.

19. The system of claim 1 , wherein the adaptive traffic is selected from the group consisting of:
adaptive bit-rate encoded traffic; MPEG-DASH (Moving Picture Experts Group-Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP)) traffic; Adaptive HTTP streaming (AHS) traffic; HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) traffic; Adobe Systems HTTP Dynamic Streaming traffic; Apple Inc. HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) traffic; Microsoft Smooth Streaming traffic; Advanced Video Coding (AVC) traffic; adaptive-resolution video traffic; and adaptive-resolution audio traffic.

20. The system of claim 1 , wherein the communications network is a satellite communications network.

21. The system of claim 1 , wherein the gateway is implemented in a core node of the communications network.

22. A method for network traffic shaping, the method comprising:
detecting a congestion condition on a communications network that indicates congestion on at least one of a plurality of stream pipes that each operates to carry network traffic of an associated traffic type from a content source to one or more subscriber terminals via the communications network,
the p

Assignees

• Viasat Inc
• Viasat Inc

Inventors

• Jaska Kristi
• Esserman James

Classifications

• H04L47/12

  Avoiding congestion; Recovering from congestion · CPC title

• H04L47/24

  Traffic characterised by specific attributes, e.g. priority or QoS · CPC title

• H04L47/22 Primary

  Traffic shaping · CPC title