Abstract: A method and apparatus are described including collecting network information, determining an association, bandwidth allocation and routing scheme based on the collected network information, notifying a mesh access point of the association, the bandwidth allocation and the routing scheme and notifying a client node of its association information. Also described are a method and apparatus including measuring link quality and channel conditions, reporting results of the measuring act to a controller, receiving a routing decision and data forwarding instructions from the controller and forwarding the routing decision and the data forwarding instructions to a client node. Further described are a method and apparatus including measuring link quality and channel conditions, reporting results of the measuring act to a controller, receiving association instructions from the centralized controller and updating previously stored association instructions with the received association instructions.

Abstract: A method and system for transmitting data are described including packetizing the data, performing forward error correction (FEC) encoding on the packetized data in order to generate at least one parity packet, appending FEC information as padding to the end of payload data of the packetized data and transmitting the packetized data and the at least one parity packet. Also described are a method and system for recovering from loss of a packet including receiving a data packet, receiving at least one parity packet, buffering the received data packet, detecting packet loss, forward error correction decoding the at least one parity packet to recover from packet loss using forward error correction information extracted from the data packet and from the at least one parity packet and forwarding the recovered packet via an internal socket. Also described is a method for staggercasting.

Abstract: An advertising statistics collection system employs multiple peers, a signing server and a collection server to ensure peer privacy when the statistics are gathered. A peer relay system aids in providing anonymity for a given peer in a peer-to-peer network environment with little or no trust between communicating parties. Peers are additionally protected by a randomly generated identifier that can be used to globally gather statistics on the peer without revealing the peer's identity.

Abstract: A method and system for transmitting data are described including packetizing the data, performing forward error correction (FEC) encoding on the packetized data in order to generate a parity packet, appending FEC information as padding to the end of payload data of the packetized data and transmitting the packetized data and the at least one parity packet. Also described are a method and system for recovering from loss of a packet including receiving a data packet, receiving a parity packet, buffering the received data packet, detecting packet loss, forward error correction decoding the parity packet to recover from packet loss using forward error correction information extracted from the data packet and from the parity packet and forwarding the recovered packet via an internal socket. Also described is a method for staggercasting.

Abstract: A method is described including requesting content from a directory service, receiving a list of peers in a peer-to-peer network having the requested content, selecting a peer from the received list of peers, establishing communications with the selected peer, receiving a list of chunks of content and ads available from the selected peer, requesting a chunk of content and ads available from said selected peer and receiving the chunk of content and randomly selected ads from the selected peer. Also described is a method including receiving a request for content, generating a list of chunks of content available for the requested content, generating a list of ads associated with the requested content, transmitting the list of available chunks of content responsive to the request, receiving a request for a selected chunk of content and transmitting the selected chunk of content and ads associated with the selected chunk of content.

Abstract: A home network system (110, 160) that personalizes the selection of information content in accordance with an interest of a user of the network (160) is disclosed. More specifically, a method and apparatus (110) are described for automatically presenting an information content of interest to the user, being provided by an Internet site (107) external to the network (160). The contents of interest may be determined in accordance with an access pattern of the user or a frequency of the use of particular topic in the content.

Abstract: Proper representation of the meaning of texts is crucial to enhancing many data mining and information retrieval tasks, including clustering, computing semantic relatedness between texts, and searching. Representing of texts in the concept-space derived from Wikipedia has received growing attention recently, due to its comprehensiveness and expertise. This concept-based representation is capable of extracting semantic relatedness between texts that cannot be deduced with the bag of words model. A key obstacle, however, for using Wikipedia as a semantic interpreter is that the sheer size of the concepts derived from Wikipedia makes it hard to efficiently map texts into concept-space. An efficient algorithm is proved which is able to represent the meaning of a text by using the concepts that best match it. In particular, this approach first computes the approximate top- concepts that are most relevant to the given text. These concepts are then leverage to represent the meaning of the given text.

Abstract: A home network system that personalizes the selection of information content in accordance with an interest of a user of the network is disclosed. More specifically, a method and apparatus are described for automatically presenting an information content of interest to the user, being provided by an Internet site external to the network. The contents of interest may be determined in accordance with an access pattern of the user or a frequency of the use of particular topic in the content.

Abstract: A method and apparatus are described including receiving a data Packet having a data packet header, storing the received data packet as shared payload, determining if the received data packet is a first data packet, initializing a sequence starting number responsive to the determination, generating a new data packet header, calculating a sequence number for the received data packet using the sequence starting number, inserting the new sequence number into the new data packet header, unicasting the new data packet header and the shared payload to a plurality of client devices.

Abstract: A method and system are provided that can automatically discover related images and recommend them. It uses images that occur on the same page or are taken by the same photographer for image discovery. The system can also use semantic relatedness for filtering images. Sentiment analysis can also be used for image ranking and photographer ranking.

Abstract: Analyzing auxiliary information associated with a video asset is performed. A topic is then determined from the extracted keywords where the topic is used as a basis of a query to return results such as news articles and other related information that is relevant to the topic of a video asset current being viewed or accessed.

Abstract: A traffic optimizer facilitates communication of data packets using a unicast protocol between a server and at least one of a plurality of clients through a multicast network. The traffic optimizer includes a communication processor and a packet processor. The communication processor receives both data including association data and the data packets using the unicast protocol from the server. The association data includes IP addresses of the server and IP addresses of at least one of a plurality of clients available for communication. The packet processor processes the data packets to optimize data transfer in response to an analysis of the data packets, and forwards the processed data packets to at least one of the plurality of clients at respective ones of the received IP addresses through a multicast network using the unicast protocol.

Abstract: A method is described including requesting content from a directory service, receiving a list of peers in a peer-to-peer network having the requested content, selecting a peer from the received list of peers, establishing communications with the selected peer, receiving a list of chunks of content and ads available from the selected peer, requesting a chunk of content and ads available from said selected peer and receiving the chunk of content and randomly selected ads from the selected peer. Also described is a method including receiving a request for content, generating a list of chunks of content available for the requested content, generating a list of ads associated with the requested content, transmitting the list of available chunks of content responsive to the request, receiving a request for a selected chunk of content and transmitting the selected chunk of content and ads associated with the selected chunk of content.

Abstract: A method and system for securely transferring a multiplicity of short messages using an unsecure connection begins by loading a secure domain component on a client device using a secure connection and then loading an unsecure domain component on the client device. Encrypted messages are sent from an unsecure server to the unsecure domain component. The client device transfers the received encrypted message from the unsecure domain to the secure domain, where the secure domain component decrypts the received encrypted messages. This method works repeatedly without reloading either the secure domain component or the unsecure domain component and by using the unsecure connection to transfer the encrypted messages.

Abstract: A method and apparatus are described for selecting an access point in a wireless network, including initializing a channel index, recording a received signal power and information contained in one of a beacon message and a probe request response message, calculating an access link metric for each candidate access point, the access link 13 metric being between an end device and each candidate access point on the channel indexed by the channel index responsive to the received signal power and information receiving a path metric between each candidate access point and a gateway, estimating a function using the access link metric and the path metric, selecting one of the candidate access points based on the function and establishing a connection with the selected access point. Also described is a method and apparatus for maintaining a connection with an access point.

Abstract: Creating a listing of suggested content and programming for a virtual channel is performed by generating rankings of previously viewed or accessed content. The method determines whether such content is either cyclical in nature as being related to a series or if such content is broadcasted less frequently.

Abstract: There are provided a method and apparatus for synchronizing a plurality of media streams that use Forward Error Correction. The apparatus includes a memory device (110), a FEC encoder (120), and a control device (140). The memory device (110) is for buffering the plurality of media streams. The FEC encoder (120) is for generating FEC packets for streams. The control device (140) is for determining, for each stream, a respective threshold amount of buffer to be filled in order to initiate generation of the corresponding FEC packets, and upon a fastest one of the streams filling the respective threshold amount of buffer, causing an initiation of the generation of the FEC packets for the fastest stream, as well as for the other streams, irrespective of a current fill amount of the other streams, wherein said control device causes the initiation of the generation of the FEC packets by the FEC encoder via signaling.

Abstract: Because packets dropped due to network congestion cannot reach the intended receiver whereas corrupted packets can still be received, the reception status of multiple packets is different for congested and non-congested paths. This difference reflects a spatial variation in the received data stream that is indicative of congestion. Network congestion detection is described that treats the reception status of sequences of multiple packets as patterns and converts the problem of congestion detection into a two-class pattern classification problem. A Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier is trained to classify the reception status of sequences of packets as being indicative or not of network congestion. If network congestion is detected, congestion control measures can then be taken. Extensive simulations demonstrate high detection accuracy under different network parameters.

Abstract: A method and apparatus are described including collecting network information, determining an association, bandwidth allocation and routing scheme based on the collected network information, notifying a mesh access point of the association, the bandwidth allocation and the routing scheme and notifying a client node of its association information. Also described are a method and apparatus including measuring link quality and channel conditions, reporting results of the measuring act to a controller, receiving a routing decision and data forwarding instructions from the controller and forwarding the routing decision and the data forwarding instructions to a client node. Further described are a method and apparatus including measuring link quality and channel conditions, reporting results of the measuring act to a controller, receiving association instructions from the centralized controller and updating previously stored association instructions with the received association instructions.

Abstract: A method and apparatus are described for selecting an access point in a wireless network, including initializing a channel index, recording a received signal power and information contained in one of a beacon message and a probe request response message, calculating an access link metric for each candidate access point, the access link metric being between an end device and each candidate access point on the channel indexed by the channel index responsive to the received signal power and information receiving a path metric between each candidate access point and a gateway, estimating a function using the access link metric and the path metric, selecting one of the candidate access points based on the function and establishing a connection with the selected access point. Also described is a method and apparatus for maintaining a connection with an access point.