884 results about "Multicast packets" patented technology

A network caching system for streamed applications provides for the caching of streamed applications within a computer network that are accessible by client systems within the network. Clients request streamed application file pages from other client systems, proxy servers, and application servers as each streamed application file is stored in a cache and used. Streamed application file page requests are broadcast to other clients using a multicast packet. Proxy servers are provided in the network that store a select set of streamed application file pages and respond to client requests by sending a response packet containing the requested streamed application file page if the streamed application file page is stored on the proxy server. Streamed application servers store all of the streamed application file pages. Clients try to send requests to streamed application servers as a last resort. Clients can concurrently send requests to other clients, to a proxy server, and to a streamed application server. Clients measure the response time to the client's requests placing a positive weighting on the more responsive request path and sending subsequent requests to the more positively weighted request path first.

A communication protocol that provides link-level and media access control (MAC) level functions for wireless (e.g., ad-hoc) networks and is robust to mobility or other dynamics, and for scaling to dense networks. In a mobile or otherwise dynamic network, any control-packet collisions will be only temporary and fair. In a dense network, the network performance degrades gracefully, ensuring that only a certain percentage of the common channel is consumed with control packets. The integrated protocol allows packets (e.g., data scheduling control packets) to be scheduled in a collision-free and predictable manner (known to all neighbors), multicast packets can be reliably scheduled, as well as streams of delay- or delay-jitter-sensitive traffic. Further, using an optional network code, the scheduling of control packets can appear to observers to be randomized.

Roughly described, incoming data packets are delivered by the NIC directly to at least two user level endpoints. In an aspect, only filters that cannot be ambiguous are created in the NIC. In another aspect, the NIC maintains a filter table supporting direct delivery of incoming unicast and multicast data packets to one user level endpoint. Additional requests to join the same multicast group cause replacement of the NIC filter with one in the kernel. In another aspect, a NIC has limited capacity to maintain multicast group memberships. In response to a new multicast filter request, the kernel establishes it in the NIC only if the NIC still has sufficient capacity; otherwise it is established in the kernel.