Patent ID: 7453805

Claim:
A method of exchanging signaling information for optimizing a rate control scheme in a mobile Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) communication network, wherein data packets are transmitted over the network using Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) from an external packet switched streaming sender to a mobile terminal employing TCP Friendly Rate Control (TFRC) as the rate control scheme with a sending rate which can be adapted using feedback information from the mobile terminal, the method comprising: exchanging Packet Data Protocol (PDP) context information including a negotiable service parameter indicating the maximum or guaranteed bit rate for downlink between the mobile terminal and a gateway support node of the network; receiving at a control plane of the mobile terminal the PDP context information; transmitting the received PDP context information to the packet switched streaming sender using a real time stream protocol; and adapting the sending rate at the packet switched streaming sender using the received PDP context information according to X next =min {max {min {2*X_recv}, s/R}, X_max}, where X next is the next sending rate, X is the current sending rate, X_recv is the receiving rate at the TFRC mobile terminal, s is the packet size, R is the round trip time and X_max is the maximum or guaranteed bit rate for downlink.