Patent ID: 7937485

Claim:
A method of intelligently translating between streaming protocols, the method comprising: receiving a multimedia stream of data, the multimedia stream of data having a streaming protocol; receiving network control data indicating a level of demand for the multimedia stream of data, the network control data indicating a number of users demanding the multimedia stream of data; translating the multimedia stream of data to a different streaming protocol to reduce bandwidth; and forwarding the translated multimedia stream of data to a transport network; wherein translating the multimedia stream of data is performed according to a threshold of users assigned to a digital subscriber line access multiplexer, wherein if the number of users is greater than the threshold, then the multimedia stream of data is translated to a multicast streaming protocol, and wherein if the number of users is less than the threshold, then the multimedia stream of data is translated to a uni-cast streaming protocol; wherein translating the multimedia stream of data includes determining a time of day dependency of popularity of the multimedia stream in determining to multicast or unicast the multimedia stream; wherein network control data is received from a network element that performs multicast replications, the network control data is received from a digital subscriber line access multiplexer, the network control data includes a listing of channels in use received in real-time with each requested or dropped channel.