Patent ID: 8121777

Claim:
A computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon a vehicle traffic information data structure comprising a payload field containing data representing a particular type of vehicle traffic information, wherein, the particular type of vehicle traffic information comprises one of (i) drive-times strings metadata, or (ii) drive-times data, or (iii) drive-times route metadata, and the data structure and payload field have fixed sizes, and the data structure is generated on a regular basis by a data center and is subsequently broadcast on a regular basis over a wireless network in a push manner to one or more wireless receiver devices located within a particular service coverage region, and the data in the payload field is pre-formatted by the data center and is specific to the particular service coverage region, and wherein whenever the particular type of vehicle traffic information comprises drive-times strings metadata, the payload field comprises, a first sub-field comprising data representing route string-record metadata, a second sub-field comprising data representing a region ID, wherein a change in the region ID informs each receiver device that the route string-record metadata in the first sub-field corresponds to a different service coverage region than the particular service coverage region, a third sub-field comprising data representing a version value, a fourth sub-field comprising data representing a packet number value specifying a sequence number for the vehicle traffic information data structure, and a fifth sub-field comprising data representing a total packets value specifying a total number of vehicle traffic information data structures to be broadcast that will contain said route string-record metadata.