Alcatel Lucent

Alcatel

Alcatel Canada Inc.

Gregory Gyetko

Bakri Aboukarr

Allan Poulsen

Dat Ba Nguyen

A method and system for querying a plurality of IGMP hosts supported by an IGMP router wherein the IGMP router logically subdivides the plurality of IGMP hosts into groups of hosts. Each group of hosts contains one or more IGMP hosts. The IGMP router sends the GMQ signal to one group of hosts at a time and the GMQs are sent at regularly spaced-apart times throughout a GMQ interval predetermined for the IGMP router. The IGMP router processes the membership report after receiving a membership report from an IGMP host. The time spacing between adjacent GMQs is equal to the length of the GMQ interval divided by the number of groups of hosts. Each group of hosts is maintained to have at least a selected number of hosts.

Query load balancing for internet group management protocol (IGMP) general membership queries (GMQs)

A system and method for performing IGMP at an router, GMQ on homes serviced by the IGMP router or channels. Each channel has a corresponding broadcast group characterized in that a plurality of the counters are provided at the IGMP router. Each counter is associated with the unique host and channel combination and is incremented after a response time interval, which begins when the IGMP router sends a GMQ message to the host, has elapsed and the IGMP router has failed to receive a Join report for the host and channel combination associated with that counter and responsive to a counter being equal to a selected robustness parameter, the host and channel combination associated with the counter is dropped from the broadcast group corresponding to the channel of that host and channel combination.

Centralized IGMP GMQ timing

Method and apparatus for improving channel changing or channel surfing functionality in IGMP supported services.

Growing community of inventors

Dunrobin, Canada

Gregory Gyetko