Patent ID: 7656798

Claim:
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; and 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; wherein the end-to-end QoS message characterizing the session is a request for admitting the session to the HPNA network, wherein the ACE, responsive to the end-to-end QoS message, rejects or admits the requesting session to the HPNA network based on an outcome of the admission control decision, and wherein the QME, responsive to an admitted session, establishes at least one QoS stream in layer 2 of the MC terminal for transporting the traffic of the session between logical link control (LLC) sublayer entities within the HPNA network.