Abstract: A telephone exchanging apparatus 30 comprises a joined terminal table 341, a joined terminal table operating portion 352, and a reception side designating portion 355. The joined terminal table 341 stores terminal identification information that identifies a telephone terminal 40 that will join a conference. The joined terminal table operating portion 352 operates the joined terminal table 341 corresponding to joined terminal table operation commanding information. The reception side designating portion 355 designates the reception side of a speech packet transmitted from the telephone terminal 40. Since the joined terminal table 341 is operated by the joined terminal table operating portion 352, even if the number of people who join a conference increases, they can be easily added or deleted.

Abstract: A telecommunications rack has one or more shelves connected to a narrowband network and to a broadband network for serving a plurality of subscribers. Line termination and network termination equipment are interconnected by a bus internal to the shelf for providing subscriber access. One half of a redundant equipment pair can be placed in one shelf and the other half in another shelf in a same rack for sharing network termination equipment between such shelves. The rack or shelf in the rack can be used as a hub for connecting to a remote shelf or housing that includes the line termination equipment for connection to subscribers.

Abstract: Applicants' Contention-Resolution System for a Command-Response Data Network uses a base unit (base) that detects the occurrence of collisions for the entire network and controls the maximum length of time allowed for the multiple remote units (remotes) in the network before re-trying to send responses to the base. The base either expands or contracts this maximum time delay as needed to accommodate the number of the possible network remotes, depending on the detected collision rate and the overall utilization of the network until the base determines that there are no remotes to be registered or all of the available network slots are filled, whichever occurs first.

Abstract: An end to end forwarding architecture includes a memory hub having a first ingress interface for receiving packets from a source port. The packets have associated ingress flow identifiers. A second ingress interface outputs the packets to a switch fabric. An ingress controller manages how the packets are queued and output to the switch fabric. The same memory hub can be used for both per flow queuing and per Class of Service (CoS) queuing. A similar structure is used on the egress side of the switch fabric. The end to end forwarding architecture separates per flow traffic scheduling operations performed in a traffic manager from the per flow packet storage operations performed by the memory hub.

Abstract: A virtual reality system initiates desired real world actions in response to defined events occurring within a virtual environment. A variety of systems, such as communications devices, computer networks, and software applications, may be interfaced with the virtual reality system and made responsive to virtual events. For example, the virtual reality system may trigger a communications system to establish a communications link between people in response to a virtual event. Users, represented as avatars within the virtual environment, generate events by interacting with virtual entities, such as other avatars, virtual objects, and virtual locations. Virtual entities can be associated with specific users, and users can define desired behaviors for associated entities. Behaviors control the real world actions triggered by virtual events. Users can modify these behaviors, and the virtual reality system may change behaviors based on changing conditions, such as time of day or the whereabouts of a particular user.

Abstract: Two multi-rate transmission schemes, multi-code (MC) and variable-spreading-length (VSL) code, for realizing multimedia communications on three types of OFDM-CDMA systems are proposed. These systems can be integrated into a programmable structure such that the operation can be controlled and adjusted by system parameters and thus the transceiver can be used in different systems without changing the fundamental hardware and software architecture, which serves the trend of software-radio for future application. A transceiver architecture of multi-rate OFDM-CDMA systems is illustrated and showed its programmability such that the general system can operate under different scenarios with a common hardware structure and reconfigure by software implementation.

Abstract: A network comprises a plurality of network nodes. Each network node has a unique node identifier within the context of the network and stores a table of nodes. The table of nodes includes at least one table entry. The table entry includes three fields—a destination node field, a next node field and a cost field. The destination field is a unique node identifier corresponding to another node in the network. The next node is a unique node identifier corresponding to the next node in the communication path to the destination node. The cost field is the cost associated with communication with the network node. When a node is added to the network, it detects the presence of adjacent nodes. The new node obtains the table of nodes stored in each adjacent node and uses the information contained in the node tables to updates its own node table, thereby obtaining information for communicating with every other node in the network.

Abstract: A node (20, 20-2) of a packet switching network has a chain of processing units (30) through which a media stream of packets is routed for sequentially processing of each packet of the media stream. Each of the plural processing units of the chain generates an intra-node performance monitoring packet, and sends the intra-node performance monitoring packet to a performance monitoring unit (40) situated at the node. Each intra-node performance monitoring packet includes an indication of time spent by the packet of the media stream in the respective processing unit. The performance monitoring unit provides an indication of delay in the node for the media stream, e.g., the delay experienced at each processing unit of the chain and the overall delay for a packet of the media stream through the plural processing units comprising the processing chain of the node.

Abstract: A method is described for distance vector routing of on-demand traffic between routers within an ad-hoc network maintaining multiple loop-free paths to destinations. Each router maintains routing table entries only for destinations associated with data flows through the router which reduce the amount of storage space and bandwidth required for routing table maintenance. Diffusing computations are utilized for establishing and maintaining the routes within the network. The sending of unnecessary flood searches and search-to-infinity problems are avoided, while the protocol decreases the vulnerability of the network to various service attacks along with router failures, fading, and drop outs.

Abstract: Method and apparatus for reducing interference in a wireless communication system when the source of interference is a deterministic component of the system. In one embodiment, the receiver weights the transmitters according to when the source of interference is transmitted. Further, the transmitter may employ power boosting to overcome the source of interference. In one embodiment, a W-CDMA system transmits a sync channel concurrently with physical channels, wherein the sync channel is not orthogonal to the physical channels. The receiver may cancel the sync channel when receiving control or data information. Similarly, the receiver may weight the transmissions from multiple transmitters.

Abstract: A system and method for a packet VRU which directly utilize packet network protocols, such as those of the H.323 standard, to provide enhanced services via a packet network, such as whisper mode communications, call recording, call broadcasting, advertisement broadcasting during calls, one-number service, and operator services. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the packet VRU establishes control of media streams, such as through the use of separate signaling channels associated with various communication devices, in order to provide desired enhanced call services.

Abstract: A system and method for locally determining a fair allocated bandwidth for a network node configured to send and receive packets in an upstream direction and a downstream direction is disclosed. A local allocated bandwidth is allocated for locally generated network packets sent in the downstream direction. A minimum downstream available network bandwidth is determined from information received in the upstream direction. The local allocated bandwidth is adjusted based on the minimum downstream available network bandwidth and the local allocated bandwidth is used to govern whether a class of locally generated network packets are sent in the downstream direction.

Abstract: A method of performing policy enforcement by a switch, including receiving a plurality of frames, examining at least some of the received frames to determine whether they require non-default policy enforcement according to pre-programmed policy rules which pertain to at least one protocol, and forwarding, with default policy handling, at least some of the received frames which belong to the protocol to which the rules pertain, regardless of the policy enforcement they require.

Abstract: A method for performing end-to-end “tree-based ordered multicasting” (TOM) which ensures collective integrity and consistency of distributed operations, and which is applicable to distributed multiparty collaboration and other multipoint applications. The TOM protocol performs cascaded total ordering of messages among on-tree hosts en route from senders to receivers, and does not require the building of a separate propagation graph to compute ordering information. TOM elects sequencer nodes dynamically based on address extensions of the multicast tree. Message ordering is performed by multicasting a message from each source node to receivers, unicasting a control message from a source node across a primary node to an ordering node for the designated multicast group or transmission in the tree, determining a binding sequence number for the message and a multicast to the receiver group, and delivering messages at end hosts according to the agreed-upon sequence numbers.

Abstract: A source IPv6 mobile router is configured for establishing an IPv4 tunnel with destination IPv6 mobile router using a synthetic tag address, specifying a forwarding protocol, and IPv4 source and destination addresses. If an optional transport header is used (e.g, UDP port), the source port and destination port also are added to the synthetic tag address. The IPv6 packet includes a reverse routing header that enables the destination IPv6 mobile router to recover routing information for reaching the source IPv6 mobile router via the IPv4 network. Hence, all IPv4 routing information that may be needed by the destination IPv6 mobile router in sending an IPv6 reply packet back to the source IPv6 mobile router is maintained in the routing header specified in the IPv6 reply packet.

Abstract: Signalling information is conveyed from a transmitting device (101) to a receiving device (102) in a cellular radio network where user data transmission takes place on a traffic channel in discrete transmission bursts (111–120; 211–220; 310–313) consisting of consecutive symbols. A piece of signalling information is formatted into symbols which are transmitted as a block of consecutive symbols (FACCH) in a certain transmission burst of a traffic channel. It is also indicated within said certain transmission burst that it contains symbols carrying signalling information.

Abstract: A method and system are disclosed for mapping the topology of a network having interconnected nodes by identifying changes in the network and updating a stored network topology based on the changes. The nodal connections are represented by data tuples that store information such as a host identifier, a connector interface, and a port specification for each connection. A topology database stores an existing topology of a network. A topology converter accesses the topology database and converts the existing topology into a list of current tuples. A connection calculator calculates tuples to represent connections in the new topology. The topology converter receives the new tuples, identifies changes to the topology, and updates the topology database using the new tuples. The topology converter identifies duplicate tuples that appear in both the new tuples and the existing tuples and marks the duplicate tuples to reflect that no change has occurred to these connections.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method and apparatus to determine the state of a communications link between two nodes in a network. Typically, each node will have an RTT-based value to use, a packets sent counter, and a threshold number to use against the packet sent counter to determine if there is a problem with their communications link. Using the RTT value makes the failure detection sensitive to the actual state of the communications link at any particular time; it also allows the failure detection algorithm to take into account the bursty nature of nodes in a packetized network connection. For each packet received from a non-local node, the local node sets the counter to 0 and starts a new RTT-based time interval. The local node then increments the counter only once, regardless of how many packets it sends to the non-local node, during the RTT-based time interval. Once the time interval is up, the counter is incremented for each packet sent.

Abstract: This invention provides a more effective method for capacity planning and traffic engineering of packet networks that connect Virtual Private Network (VPN) sites. A distributed architecture efficiently computes traffic matrixes that show the number of bytes and/or packets exchanged among provider edge (PE) routers and/or service nodes. Each PE router in a service node is exports flow records to a Flow Record Processor (FRP) in the same location. The FRPs use these records in conjunction with configuration data extracted from the PE routers to compute partial traffic matrixes. The partial traffic matrixes are uploaded to a Matrix Generator to create a total traffic matrix. The total traffic matrix is essential input for capacity planning or traffic engineering tools.

Abstract: Physical channels of a user service experiencing high interference levels are to be reassigned in a hybrid time division multiple access/code division multiple access communication system. Time slots of the user service are ordered in a descending order of the measured interference. The user service physical channels in each time slot are sequentially evaluated and reassigned in the time slot order in a descending order of a desired reception quality of each physical channel of the user service.