Patent ID: 7180855
Filing Date: 2007-02-20
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. An out-of-band signaling model media control (MC) terminal for a Home Phoneline Network Association (HPNA) network, the MC terminal comprising: a Quality of Service (QoS) management entity (QME) receiving an end-to-end QoS message characterizing a down-stream session for a user application, the end-to-end QoS message including at least one QoS parameter set that is expressed at layer 3 and higher of an ISO/IEC basic reference model of Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) (ISO/IEC 7498-1) and is to be passed down to layer 2 of the MC terminal for enabling QoS traffic transport for the session; an admission control entity (ACE) performing an admission control decision relating to the session based on the end-to-end QoS message characterizing the QoS stream and concurrent bandwidth usage of the HPNA network; a frame classification entity (FCE) located at a logical link control (LLC) sublayer of the MC terminal, the FCE receiving a data frame for the down-stream session, the FCE classifying the received data frame for a media access control (MAC) sublayer based on QoS information associated with the received data frame and associating the classified data frame with a QoS stream queue physically located at the MC terminal and corresponding to a classification of the data frame; and a frame scheduling entity (FSE) located at the MAC sublayer of the MC terminal, the FSE scheduling transmission of the data frame to a destination for the data frame based on a QoS requirement associated with the down-stream QoS stream, wherein the FCE includes a frame classification table containing at least one entry having a frame classifier that is used for classifying the data frame received for the down-stream session, and wherein the FSE includes a frame scheduling table containing QoS scheduling information for the QoS stream queue associated with the classified data frame, and wherein the QoS scheduling information includes a set of QoS parameter values, a QoS stream identification (ID) for the QoS stream of the classified data frame and queue status information for the QoS stream queue, and wherein the QME of the MC terminal receives an end-to-end QoS message containing information indicating that the down-stream QoS session is terminating, further wherein the FSE, in response to the end-to-end QoS message containing information indicating that the down-stream session is terminating, removes the corresponding entry from the scheduling table, and further wherein the FCE, in response to the end-to-end QoS message containing information that the down-stream session is terminating, removes the entry having the frame classifier that is used for classifying a data frame for the down-stream session from the classification table.