Comcast Cable Communications, LLC

Chris Bastian

Ross Gilson

Amit Garg

Michael Sallas

Richard Woundy

John G Leddy

Slade Mitchell

Sam Chernak

David Urban

Jorge Salinger

Jason D Livingood

Vik Saxena

Daniel Herscovici

Bryan Kenneth Witkowski

John Reed Bartlett

Matthew J Scully

Peter J Sevcik

Thomas E Klieber

James Cary Mills, Ii

Dan Herscovici

Aspects discussed herein relate to systems, apparatuses, and methods to determine when a user remains engaged or stops paying attention to a content item. In response, a snapshot of the user's activity and environment may be obtained to ascertain the reason the user stopped paying attention. If the user stopped paying attention as a result of being uninterested in the content item, the system may replace the content item, such as an advertisement, with a different content item to regain the user's attention. Further, demographic information and the user's interests may be updated for use in scheduling future content items.

Collection analysis and use of viewer behavior

Methods and systems are disclosed for tailoring related episode content within an episode, thereby improving a user's experience. In response to receiving a request for an episode, several factors may be considered when determining how much of the related episode content to provide. These factors may include information such as whether the user has already viewed a previous episode, the elapsed time since viewing the previous episode and a user preference. Related episode content may be modified to remove portions previously viewed by a user, depending on factors such as the elapsed time and a user preference.

Providing related episode content

Information from multiple sources can be communicated to a policy server. Based on that information, the policy server can determine allocation of bandwidth, transmission priority and/or other network resources based on preferences and/or service selections provided by a subscriber and communicate information about those determinations to other network elements for policy implementation. The information provided to a policy server for determining network resource allocation can include information about one or more applications executing at a customer equipment device, information about access network bandwidth usage, information about services for which one or more devices is authorized, and/or information about network conditions.

Management of shared access network

According to some aspects as described herein, a user may purchase or otherwise be provided with an accelerated service for selected software applications, devices, and/or ports to experience a high level of communication. The accelerated service may be created, for example, by using a dedicated network data flow such that the user's customer premise equipment (CPE) network access device may put priority traffic in a different upstream data flow than the commonly shared flow, which may involve tagging the traffic upstream to the network with a priority indicator such as a flow identifier. Based on similar factors, the user may also control local priority of data received downstream from the network for distribution to one or more local devices.

Prioritizing local and network traffic

A subscriber network architecture includes a packet processing node that communicates with a network backbone and with a plurality of access nodes. The access nodes also communicate with a plurality of subscriber devices. The packet processing node controls Quality of Service (QoS) levels for the subscriber devices, routes user data to subscriber devices based on downstream communication channels of the access nodes and QoS levels, and receives data from subscriber devices (via the access nodes) for forwarding across the network backbone.

Subscriber access network architecture

A shared channel used to communicate between a cable modem termination system and multiple cable modems is managed to prevent and/or reduce the impact of congestion. If the average channel utilization is above a near-congestion threshold, a cable modem in an extended high consumption state is assigned a reduced data transmission priority for managed traffic. Priority for that cable modem is restored to a default preferred level when the channel usage by that cable modem drops below a predetermined level or when the average aggregate channel utilization by all cable modems drops below the near-congestion threshold.

Congestion management in a shared network

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Glenmoore, PA, United States of America

Chris Bastian