Conferencing Load Balancing via Dynamic Super-Peer Grouping
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional conferencing methods, whether central manager or peer-to-peer configurations, face scalability issues and lack system redundancy, leading to inefficient data communication resource management and potential session disruptions.
Innovation Solution
A method and system for resource load balancing in conferencing sessions by dynamically grouping participant devices and designating leader devices among follower devices, allowing for client-side handling of resource loads and facilitating efficient communication coordination.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a central manager configuration is used, then all participant devices can connect to a conference server for media mixing and signal transmission, but the host server takes on the entire processing load limiting scalability and becomes a single point of failure
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the centralized conference server into multiple distributed super-peer devices. Each super-peer handles a subset of participant devices, dividing the processing load across multiple nodes instead of concentrating it all in one host server. This segmentation enables both scalability (by adding more super-peers) and redundancy (since failure of one super-peer doesn't end the entire conference).
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces super-peer devices as intermediary nodes between participant devices and the conference network. These super-peers act as mediators that relay and mix media streams, reducing the burden on any single host server while maintaining coordinated communication. The super-peers synchronize among themselves to ensure consistent conference state across the distributed system.
2Productivity
If a peer-to-peer configuration is used, then participant devices can interconnect directly, but each participant device has to handle multiple concurrent connections which is not scalable
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the peer-to-peer network into hierarchical layers: participant devices connect to super-peer devices, which then connect to each other. This segmentation reduces the number of direct connections each device must manage - participants only need to maintain connections to their assigned super-peer, not to every other participant. The super-peers handle inter-group connections, enabling scalability while controlling device complexity.
3Quantity of substance
If more participant devices are added to a central manager configuration, then conference capacity increases, but synchronization becomes more difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the synchronization task across multiple super-peers, each responsible for coordinating a subset of participant devices. Rather than one host server synchronizing all participants (which becomes increasingly difficult), each super-peer manages synchronization for its local group independently. The super-peers then synchronize with each other to maintain global conference consistency, making the overall system more manageable as participant numbers grow.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and systems for resource load balancing of teleconference and video conference sessions are provided herein. In some embodiments, a method for resource load balancing of a teleconference session including a plurality of participant devices may include assigning each of the plurality of participant devices into one of a plurality of groups of participant devices based on at least one first heuristic, designating a leader device for each group of participant devices, based on at least one second heuristic to coordinate the teleconference session communications, and coordinating the teleconference session communications of each leader device to facilitate the teleconference session among the plurality of participant devices.