Patent ID: 7821941

Claim:
A method to control operation of a Broadband Remote Access Server (BRAS) device, the method comprising: extracting encapsulation information from a communications exchange between a Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) device and an external server device, the communications exchange passing through the BRAS device and a Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer (DSLAM) device; storing the encapsulation information in local memory of the BRAS device; controlling a flow of a downstream communication passing through the BRAS device and the DSLAM device toward the CPE device based on the encapsulation information stored in the local memory of the BRAS device; wherein the external server device is a DHCP server; wherein the CPE device is an end-user device; wherein the DSLAM device is disposed between the end-user device and the BRAS device; wherein extracting the encapsulation information from the communications exchange between the CPE device and the external server device includes: reading, by the BRAS device, contents from a portion of a DHCP message which is en route from the DHCP server to the end-user device through the BRAS device and subsequently the DSLAM device to assign an Internet Protocol (IP) address to the end-user device, the contents indicating that the end-user device and the DSLAM device are constructed and arranged to exchange Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) packets by (i) encapsulating portions of the TCP/IP packets within series of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) cells and (ii) exchanging the series of ATM cells, having the encapsulated portions of the TCP/IP packets therein, over a Digital Subscriber Line disposed between the end-user device and the DSLAM device; receiving, at the BRAS device, a set of TCP/IP packets from a TCP/IP packet source which is different than the DHCP server, the set of TCP/IP packets being en route from the TCP/IP packet source to the end-user device through the BRAS device and subsequently the DSLAM device; and incrementally outputting each TCP/IP packet of the set of TCP/IP packets at a predetermined data rate to direct the DSLAM device, when (i) dividing the TCP/IP packets into portions, (ii) encapsulating those portions within a stream of ATM cells, and sending the stream of ATM cells to the end-user device through the Digital Subscriber Line, to provide a Quality of Service at the particular data rate to the end-user.