Patent ID: 6032197
Filing Date: 2000-02-29
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
A method for serving full-length and reduced-length data packets from a server to a client over a unidirectional broadcast medium, each full-length data packet having a data payload and an uncompressed header with multiple fields, the method comprising the following steps:at the server:compressing an uncompressed header to form an associated compressed header having a subset of one or more of the fields so that the fields that are common to the associated uncompressed and compressed headers are identical;forming a reduced-length data packet having the compressed header and a data payload;appending a compression key to each of the full-length and reduced-length data packets, the compression key specifying whether the appended data packet is full-length or reduced-length and whether the full-length and reduced-length data packets have associated uncompressed and compressed headers;transmitting the full-length and reduced-length data packets from the server to the client over a unidirectional broadcast medium;at the client:extracting the uncompressed header from the full-length data packet;storing the uncompressed header;extracting the compressed header from the reduced-length data packet; anddecompressing the compressed headers by adding fields from the uncompressed header stored at the client that is indicated by the compression keys as being associated to the compressed header, the added fields restoring the subset of fields contained in the compressed header to said multiple fields contained in the uncompressed header.