British Telecommunications Public Limited Company

Ben Strulo

Gabriele Corliano

Marc Wennink

Stephen Leslie Corley

Vivekanand Korgaonkar

Marc Wennick

Jeffery R Farr

Martin John Owen

Satya Patel

In embodiments of the invention when a session request is received the value assigned to that session is compared to present congestion costs in the network at the present time. If the value of the session exceeds the cost then the session is accepted; otherwise it is rejected. It is possible to show mathematically that, provided this strategy is used for all session requests, then, when demand exceeds supply for a given resource, the congestion measurement for that resource rises to become equal to its shadow price. Here, in a model of a capacity constrained network, the shadow price of a capacity constraint is the cost to other users of using one unit of capacity. Congestion measurements can therefore be used to provide a 'cost' (to other users) of admitting the flow to the network, which can then be compared against the 'value' (to the network operator) of admitting the flow during the admission control evaluation. Additionally, this &#x201c;cost&#x201d; vs. &#x201c;value&#x201d; comparison can be used for path selection, as well as any other resource management decision. For example, in particularly preferred embodiments a session is not only admitted based upon the cost value comparison, but is also assigned to a particular path which maximizes value minus cost.

Admission control in a packet network

A method and system is described that adjusts the allocated capacity of a network between services, or service or traffic classes, in dependence on a congestion-influenced shadow price indication in respect of each service or class. In this respect, instead of viewing the congestion price as a cost of using already allocated unit of capacity, such a shadow price indication can be viewed as an indicator of the value obtainable from allocating an extra unit of capacity to a service or class. By so doing the shadow price indication becomes a factor to be taken into account in deciding on capacity allocation between services or classes, with a high shadow price indication for a service or class indicating that additional value would likely be obtained by allocating an additional unit of capacity to the service or class.

Capacity adaptation between services or classes in a packet network

A communications system including a receiver and a first transmitter, wherein the first transmitter transmits noise signals across a range of communication channels used by the receiver, the receiver being adapted to receive a transmission transmitted by a second transmitter over one or more of said range of communication channels, and to distinguish the transmission made by the second transmitter from the noise signals using information from the first transmitter about the noise signals.

Method and system for secure communication

A network has a plurality of edge nodes () and core nodes () for carrying flows of data from an ingress gateway () to an egress gateway () along a path of core nodes. For any given path in the network work from an ingress node to an egress node, the number of flows is controlled. When network congestion occurs, the egress gateway () provides an indication of the level of network congestion. Terminating flows is disruptive and therefore the ingress gateway () can mark other flows with a congestion marker and send them to the egress gateway (). These marked flows are routed by the core and egress gateway () but ignored for calculating network congestion. When the network congestion is alleviated, the marked flows can be un-marked and treated as normal flows, hence the network avoids unnecessary flow termination.

Network flow termination

Methods and systems for providing information relating to congestion at a network element caused by data units intended to be forwarded across a telecommunications network by the network element, the apparatus comprising: load-data receiving means for receiving load data relating to data units intended to be forwarded by the network element; rate-data obtaining means for obtaining data indicative of a configurable rate; first and second registers for storing first and second metrics; first and second updating means operable to update the metrics in said first and second registers in dependence on said load data and on the configurable rate; and a congestion indication provider operable to provide indications of congestion in dependence on the metrics stored in the registers; said apparatus being configured in such that it may provide behavior equivalent to a virtual queue marking scheme by virtue of a minor modification to hardware provided for Single Rate Three Color Marking.

Methods and apparatus for providing congestion information

Content items or data defining access to content items for provision to one or more users is respectively maintained. Respective content access data for those users from which content items or data defining access to content items are received is changed and a sub-set of the content items or data defining access to content items is provided to a user, the members of the sub-set being determined in dependence on the content access data of the user. Each content item or set of data defining access to a content item has a property having a value, and the content access data includes a content access value relating to the property, wherein the sub-set of the content items or data defining access to content items is determined in dependence on the respective values.

Content provisioning method and system

In a connection management system for setting up connections in a communications network, run-time negotiation is carried out to avoid feature interaction. Users of the network are provided with user agents (intelligent software) which have access to user profiles. When a calling user wants to set up a particular connection configuration, which may involve service features such as ring back later on busy, their user agent sends a connection configuration proposal to the user agent for a called user. The two user agents then negotiate to establish a mutually acceptable connection configuration, if one is available. The negotiation is based on alternative connection configurations stored in order of preference in the respective user profiles. These are proposed and counter-proposed by the user agents in descending preference order until the mutually acceptable configuration is reached or the connection fails.

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Felixstowe, United Kingdom

Ben Strulo