Abstract: The invention includes a technique for integrating emergency calling for VoIP users with legacy emergency services to facilitate adapting to the evolving emergency services network and the services that are available in a given location. Generic location information provided by (or determined for) VoIP emergency callers, typically in civic or geodetic formats, is translated into Emergency Response Locations (ERLs) defining an area, such as an area within an enterprise premises, in which the caller is located. The translated location information is conveyed to the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) with the emergency call in for form of the ANI (Automatic Number Identification) or calling line identification number. An appropriate route/gateway is then selected to be used to reach the PSAP appropriate for the caller's location, and an emergency call notification to the appropriate local emergency response personnel is generated within the enterprise based on the caller's location.

Abstract: The present invention relates to electrical enclosures having a cabinet and a door connected by hinges and in particular to a hinge which allows a door, while closed, to be flush with a surface that surrounds the perimeter of the cabinet door opening. The hinge system utilizes a spring that pushes the door in a direction that is generally normal to and away from the cabinet, creating a space between the peripheral flange on the door and the surface that surrounds the cabinet door opening thus allowing the door to swing freely as it is opened and closed. The door can be held closed by use of various latching systems. While the door is in the closed position, latches near the hinges will compress the hinge springs, eliminating the space between the door and the cabinet opening.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for learning the identity of VRRP backup router(s) for a VRRP master router enables the identity of VRRP backup routers to be determined quickly on demand, or enables a table of VRRP master and backup routers to be established over time. A VRRP query message type is defined as a type of VRRP message that will enable the routers on the network to be queried to determine which router(s) are VRRP backup routers for a virtual IP address associated with a VRRP master. The VRRP query message may be initiated by the VRRP master, a network management system, or another entity. The VRRP backup routers may respond with a VRRP response message, which is also defined as a type of VRRP message. The VRRP response message may be unicast to the VRRP master or network management system, or broadcast to enable a table of VRRP master/backup routers to be created.

Abstract: Domains (multiple collaborating service providers) create service offerings between pairs of edge nodes that interconnect with other domains in the network. The service offerings may specify the available bandwidth, quality of service, reliability, available security, price, subscriber and service contextual specific and other SLA information. When a new service is to be created, the service definition is used along with information about the available service offerings to determine a set of networks to implement the service. Information associated with the service offerings may be flooded to all other networks. Alternatively, the service offering information may be provided to a trusted third party (SLA broker) which may provide SLA services on the network to select sets of domains to implement inter-domain services, and may also proxy to set up the service for the SLA requesting party.

Abstract: Maintenance entities may be defined between customer or provider flow points for performance management on an Ethernet network. The maintenance entities may be defined for access link, intra-domain, and inter-domain, and may be defined on a link or service basis. The maintenance entities may be used to monitor performance within a network or across networks, and may be used to monitor various performance parameters, such as frame loss, frame delay, frame delay variation, availability, errored frame seconds, service status, frame throughput, the number of frames transmitted, received or dropped, the status of a loopback interface and/or the amount of time a service has been unavailable. Several management mechanisms may be used, and the measurements may be collected using a solicited collection method, in which a responses are required and collected, or an unsolicited collection method in which a response is not required.

Abstract: Remote viewing software at a display may contain control logic to enable it to manage the connection associated with a session. The connection management process may preferentially elect to establish a socket connection and, if that is unavailable or unreliable, may use HTTP tunneling. The connection management process may also automatically reconnect the display to the session so that the display is not required to manually re-join an ongoing session. The connection management process also manages the termination of the session to ensure that both the server and the client process at the display end the session correctly.

Abstract: Ripeness indicators are provided and associated with statistics counters to enable the counters to be read once sufficient data has accumulated in the counters. The ripeness indicators may be used to signal to the network device when one or more counters has met or exceeded a predetermined value, such as 50%. Monitoring ripeness indicators associated with the counters enables the network device to harvest counters when they are sufficiently full to gather meaningful statistics from the counters, while ignoring counters that do not contain sufficient data or are not in danger of overflowing. This enables the network device to devote less resources to statistics gathering since high volume counters may be harvested more frequently than low volume counters. The ripeness indicators may be provided with individual counters, groups of counters, or accounts containing individual and/or groups of counters.

Abstract: Round-trip time estimates may be calculated from an acknowledgement of an original packet transmission or from an acknowledgment of a retransmission without ambiguity by using different segment sizes for the same packet during transmission and retransmission. By using different segment sizes, the retransmitted segment will be acknowledged with a different acknowledgement number. In one embodiment, a TCP sender uses segment sizes that are slightly smaller than the maximum segment size for the initial transmission (e.g. MSS-4 bytes), and uses maximally sized segments during retransmission. When one of the two transmissions is explicitly acknowledged, the TCP sender can then use the different byte sequence acknowledgement numbers to discern which transmission is being acknowledged and correctly measure the round-trip time. This also allows the TCP sender to initiate the NewReno fast recovery algorithm only upon receipt of a retransmission acknowledgment.

Abstract: Customer Edge (CE) network elements can automatically learn IPSec tunnel endpoints for other CEs connected to sites in a Virtual Private Network (VPN) so that manual configuration of IPSec tunnel endpoints is not required and so that a centralized database of IPSec tunnel endpoints is not required to be separately maintained. According to an embodiment of the invention, a BGP export route policy is set on all CEs, so that when they announce their VPN routes in the standard format, the application of this export route policy changes the announcement to replace the BGP peering point address that would ordinarily be advertised with the IPSec tunnel endpoint address. When any given site receives a VPN route update formatted in this manner, it processes the VPN route update and learns from the update the IPSec tunnel endpoint as well as the associated VPN routes.

Abstract: A key selection process is provided which secures traffic between VPN end-points using a combination of SVPN group keys and pair-wise keys. The type of key used is based on the dynamic needs of traffic between the end-points, where the needs may include throughput and quality of service. SVPN group keys allow end-points in a group to initiate data communications while obtaining pair-wise keys in the background. Once pair wise keys are obtained, communications can be transferred using the obtained keys. As the throughput, quality of service, routing and other needs of the channel change, the type of keys used for data transfer may concomitantly change between SVPN group keys and pair-wise keys to appropriately utilize network resources. The key selection idea may be extended to allow communication through a hub using a group key while establishing pair-wise channels for group member communications in the background.

Abstract: Nodes on a link state protocol controlled Ethernet network implement a link state routing protocol such as IS-IS. Nodes assign an IP address or I-SID value per VRF and then advertise the IP addresses or I-SID values in IS-IS LSAs. When a packet is to be forwarded on the VPN, the ingress node identifies the VRF for the packet and performs an IP lookup in customer address space in the VRF to determine the next hop and the IP address or I-SID value of the VRF on the egress node. The ingress node prepends an I-SID or IP header to identify the VRFs and then creates a MAC header to allow the packet to be forwarded to the egress node on the link state protocol controlled Ethernet network. When the packet is received at the egress node, the MAC header is stripped from the packet and the appended I-SID or IP header is used to identify the egress VRF.

Abstract: The performance and ease of management of wireless communications environments is improved by a mechanism that enables access points (APs) to perform automatic channel selection. A wireless network can therefore include multiple APs, each of which will automatically choose a channel such that channel usage is optimized. Furthermore, APs can perform automatic power adjustment so that multiple APs can operate on the same channel while minimizing interference with each other. Wireless stations are load balanced across APs so that user bandwidth is optimized. A movement detection scheme provides seamless roaming of stations between APs.

Abstract: A time-shared network comprising edge nodes and optical core nodes may be dynamically divided into several embedded networks, each of which covering selected edge nodes. At least one of the edge nodes may host an embedded-network controller operable to form multiple-source flow-rate allocation requests each of the requests specifying flow-rate allocations to a plurality of paths from several source nodes to several sink nodes. A core node may also host an embedded-network controller or several embedded-network controllers. The time-shared network may use both time-division multiplexing and burst switching.

Abstract: Test equipment operable to evaluate handoff in wireless networks can be configured as an infrastructure test system or a client mobility test system. The infrastructure test system includes a plurality of client emulating devices and a client motion emulator for testing real access points. Each client emulating device is operable to emulate multiple individual virtual mobile devices (“virtual mobile devices”). The client motion emulator computes a mathematical representation of the modeled network and motion of virtual mobile devices in that network. The client motion emulator employs the mathematical representation to calculate path loss between virtual mobile devices and the real access points in the modeled network. The calculated path loss information is transmitted to the virtual mobile devices. Path loss of communications from a virtual mobile device to an access point is implemented via a programmable attenuator.

Abstract: IP applications may be hosted on processors other than the processor on which their associated routing entity is hosted by causing the routing context to be extended to the new processor and causing IP termination to occur at the new processor. Applications may define policies specifying packet attributes and actions to be taken on matching packets, so that packets matching the policy may be directed to a processor hosting the application rather than a processor hosting the routing entity. A steering policy manager may be implemented to receive policies from the applications, verify the policy format and uniqueness vis-à-vis previously implemented policies, and implement the policies by passing the policies to one or more steering policy agents. Filters may be programmed into the data plane or the control plane to cause IP termination to occur on the processor hosting the application.

Abstract: The performance and ease of management of wireless communications environments is improved by a mechanism that enables access points (APs) to perform automatic channel selection. A wireless network can therefore include multiple APs, each of which will automatically choose a channel such that channel usage is optimized. Furthermore, APs can perform automatic power adjustment so that multiple APs can operate on the same channel while minimizing interference with each other. Wireless stations are load balanced across APs so that user bandwidth is optimized. A movement detection scheme provides seamless roaming of stations between APs.

Abstract: Changed Host Display Information (HDI) may be captured, selectively encoded, and optionally transmitted between participants over a session. Hints indicative of which portions of the HDI may have changed are collected and used to select areas of HDI for processing. Changed HDI is encoded using an encoding process selected from a number of encoding processes by determining which process is likely to efficiently encode that portion of the HDI. Where the HDI is divided into tiles for processing the encoding method selection may take place on a tile-by-tile basis, for example by counting the number of colors in the tile to be encoded. Changed HDI may be transmitted to viewers using paint commands containing pixel information and copy commands indicating that a portion of the HDI has been moved.

Abstract: A modular optical switch includes a set of optical switch modules connected in a mesh, a master controller for the whole optical node and a switch-module controller for each of the optical switch modules. The optical switch modules receive optical signals from, and transmit optical signals to, edge nodes based on connection requests received from the edge nodes. The master controller acts to select a path, using a simple or compound time-slot matching process, through the mesh of switch modules for each optical signal related to a connection request. Advantageously, the optical switch modules are fast switching, enabling the use of time-sharing schemes such as TDM, and the modular optical core node is made practical by efficient path selection at the master controller. A hybrid modular switch may include both optical and electronic switch modules, a master controller, and a switch-module controller for each of the switch modules.

Abstract: A system for maintaining a large number of Handheld Electronic Devices (HEDs) includes a drawer having a divider structure configured to define compartments that are sized to hold the HEDs while the HEDs are stored in the drawer. A 20 port USB hub is provided in the drawer so that 20 HEDs may be connected to the USB hub while stored in the drawer. The USB hub allows the HEDs to be charged at a low rate while being synchronized with a computer and at a high rate when not being synchronized. The USB hub is designed using a tree structure of available USB hub chips to enable a larger number of USB ports. A microcontroller is provided to control the manner in which the computer is allowed to recognize the HEDs connected to the USB ports.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for managing communication between participants in a virtual environment enables the participants to elect to automatically connect with each other via a preferred communication mechanism, manually connect with each other, or choose not to connect with each other. The connection may be point-to-point between two participants or may include multiple participants. Establishment of a connection, or the ability to establish a connection, may be based on the proximity of the participants, or the Avatars representing the participants, in the virtual environment. Once the connection is established, the connection may be managed so that the connection is maintained while the Avatars remain proximate each other and is automatically severed once the Avatars move away from each other. Environmental noise and other audio aspects may be included in the connection to simulate a real-world conversation.