Patent ID: 9313246
Filing Date: 2016-04-12
CPC Classification: H04L

Claim Text:
1. A method comprising: at a Session Traversal Utilities for Network Address Translators (STUN) enabled router device among multiple router devices in a network: receiving a STUN request from a source client device that is destined for a destination client device along a network data path that traverses the multiple router devices; adding to a payload of the STUN request first node information that indicates a node hop-limit that specifies a number of hops that a packet is allowed before being discarded by a router, a hop-count that specifies a number of nodes that a packet has traversed, a direction attribute that specifies whether a packet is a request or a response, and an attribute of one of bandwidth, processing load, and congestion at the router device, to form a modified STUN request; forwarding the modified STUN request toward the destination client device along the network data path; receiving from the destination client device a STUN response that includes (i) the first node information that was copied from the STUN request into the STUN response at the destination client device, and (ii) further node information that indicates a node hop-limit, a hop-count, a direction attribute and an attribute of one of bandwidth, processing load, and congestion of a first other router device of the multiple router devices, wherein the further node information was added to the STUN request or the STUN response by the first other router device as the STUN request and STUN response traversed the multiple routers; forwarding the STUN response to the source client device to enable the source client device to adjust a bit rate of rich media sent thereby to the destination client device along the network data path based on the first node information and the further node information; and receiving from the source client device the rich media and reducing the bit rate or a quality thereof before forwarding the rich media to the first other router device if the further node information indicates the first other router device has less bandwidth than that of the STUN enabled router device.