Cisco Technology, Inc.

Joshua B Gahm

David R Oran

Zhi Li

Ali C Begen

Rong Pan

Xiaoqing Zhu

Robert Drisko

Kapil Sharma

John Pickens

Narayan Venkat

William C VerSteeg

Joel Warren Schoenblum

William C Ver Steeg

Carol Etta Iturralde

Hao Hu

Atif Faheem

Benjamin Lorne Walton

Eric Cunningham

Gene Halbrooks

John George Apostolopoulos

Toerless Eckert

Scott C Labrozzi

Biswaranjan Panda

Frederick Juergens Baker

Bruce P Osler

Hoi-tauw Jozef Chou

Aimin Ding

Márton Ákos Sipos

Saamer Akhshabi

Marton Akos Sipos

John Robert Pickens

Congestion aware load balancing for distributed storage may be provided. First, a read request for data may be received. The data may have redundancy through coding or through copying. Then it may be determined which K of M possible storage nodes to direct the received read request. K and M may be integers and M may be greater than K. In response to determining which K of M possible storage nodes to direct the received read request, the received read request may be copied into K read requests respectively corresponding to the determined K of M possible storage nodes. The copied K read requests may then be transmitted to the determined respective K storage nodes. And, in response to transmitting the copied K read requests, a client may receive data replies from each of the determined respective K storage nodes.

Congestion aware load balancing for distributed storage

Various implementations disclosed herein enable a more efficient allocation of one or more shared network resources (e.g., bandwidth, memory, processor time, etc.) amongst a number of client devices based on media content data complexity and client device resource constraints in order to better manage perceptual playback quality of adaptive streaming content. In some implementations, a method includes aligning sequences of one or more temporal segments such that time boundaries of temporal segments across the sequences are in alignment; and, selecting segment representations for each temporal segment based on a combination of the sequence alignment and perceptual quality level values associated with available segment representations, such that a combination of resulting perceptual quality levels satisfies a joint quality criterion. Each sequence is associated with a respective one of a number of client devices sharing a network resource and an instance of a respective video stream. The one or more temporal segments of each sequence are used to provide segment representations of media content data to one of the client devices. The alignment of time boundaries of temporal segments is achieved at least in part by adjusting performance characteristics associated with at least some of the one or more temporal segments.

Dynamic programming across multiple streams

In one embodiment, an HTTP streaming session may be initiated at a client device in a network. The client device may have a buffer and may be configured to request and receive one or more data segments over HTTP from an HTTP server. A first data segment at a first data source rate may be requested and subsequently received. The first data segment may be stored in the buffer. A second data source rate may then be calculated based on a storage level in the buffer, and a second data segment at the second data source rate may be requested.

HTTP streaming client adaptation algorithm based on proportional-integral control

Methods and systems are disclosed for calculating and applying a VQ metric which operates during the decoding of compressed video. As such, this metric is appropriate for all formats of compressed video codecs (e.g., MPEG-2, AVC and HEVC). The VQ metric relies on the decoded quantization parameter (Qp) together with analysis of both the compressed and decoded video. As such, the VQ metric does not require a reference video, and is less cumbersome to use for multiple channels, e.g., statistically multiplexed channels.

Quality metric for compressed video

In an example, there is disclosed a computing apparatus, having one or more logic elements, including at least one hardware logic element, comprising a network-aware data repair engine to compute a feasible repair log for n fragments of an original data structure, comprising: receiving a predictive failure scenario; identifying at least one repair &#x3be;for the failure scenario; determining that &#x3be;is feasible; and logging &#x3be;to a feasible repair log. When a node failure occurs, a network cost may be computed for each repair in the feasible repair log, and an optimal repair may be selected.

Network-aware storage repairs

A controller device is configured to communicate with storage nodes of a distributed storage system (DSS) in which erasure codes are used to encode source data onto the storage nodes and ranks of matrices containing coding coefficients associated with the erasure codes indicate whether repairs of failed storage nodes of the DSS are feasible. A decomposition structure is generated to be used as a guide for transforming the matrices to upper triangle form (UTF) for use in computing the ranks of the matrices. While the DSS is operating to perform repairs of the failed storage nodes, as part of determining feasible repair strategies that will preserve subsequent repairs of failed storage nodes, the ranks of the matrices are computed by transforming the matrices to UTF using operations on the submatrices according to the decomposition structure.

Efficient repair of erasure coded data based on coefficient matrix decomposition

Various implementations disclosed herein enable a more efficient allocation of one or more shared network resources (e.g., bandwidth, memory, processor time, etc.) amongst a number of client devices based on media content data complexity and client device resource constraints in order to better manage perceptual playback quality of adaptive streaming content. In some implementations, a method includes aligning sequences of one or more temporal segments; and, selecting segment representations for each temporal segment based on a combination of the sequence alignment and perceptual quality level values associated with available segment representations, such that a combination of resulting perceptual quality levels satisfies a joint quality criterion. Each sequence is associated with one of a number of client devices sharing a network resource. The one or more temporal segments of each sequence are used to provide segment representations of media content data to one of the client devices.

Methods and systems are disclosed for calculating and applying a VQ metric which operates during the decoding of compressed video. As such, this metric is appropriate for all formats of compressed video codecs (e.g. MPEG-2, AVC and HEVC.) The VQ metric relies on the decoded quantization parameter (Qp) together with analysis of both the compressed and decoded video. As such, the VQ metric does not require a reference video, and is less cumbersome to use for multiple channels, e.g., statistically multiplexed channels.

In one embodiment, a method comprises receiving a stream of transport packets encapsulating media packets, and generating a reference to the point-of-interest media packet relative to the location of the point-of-interest within the transport packet stream. The reference is generated for each media packet that is identified as a point-of-interest.

Locating points of interest using references to media frames within a packet flow

A method is provided in one example embodiment and includes communicating content to a content receiver, where a first portion of the content has a first drop priority. The method also includes determining a buffer status for a buffer at the content receiver, and adjusting the first drop priority to a second drop priority for a second portion of the content based on the buffer status. In more particular embodiments, the second drop priority can be higher than the first drop priority of the first portion of the content if the buffer is full or above a threshold. Also, the second drop priority can be lower than the first drop priority of the first portion of the content if content in the buffer has not started to render.

System and method to reduce stream start-up delay for adaptive streaming

An apparatus can include a session rate limit calculator and a rate limiter. The session rate limit calculator can be configured to compute a session rate limit for a given session of a plurality of active streaming media sessions based on state information for the given session and state information for a downstream bottleneck link to which the apparatus feeds the plurality of active streaming media sessions. The rate limiter can be configured to control downstream traffic for the given session based on the computed session rate limit and to provide corresponding rate-limited downstream traffic for the given session.

Network-based adaptive rate limiting

A method is provided in one example embodiment and includes receiving video data at an adaptive bitrate (ABR) client that includes a buffer; determining whether a buffer level for the buffer is below a target buffer level; applying a random delay for a fetch interval associated with requesting the video data; and requesting a next segment of the video data after the random delay. The random delay can provide for a plurality of fetch times to become decorrelated from each other.

System and method for providing randomization in adaptive bitrate streaming environments

Techniques are provided for optimizing quality in adaptive streaming, where information is obtained relating to encoding bitrates and content quality scores for content segments of a content stream. The content segments of the content stream are provided by a content server and downloaded by a computing device. For each content segment, an encoding bitrate is determined for downloading the content segment from the content server, where determining the encoding bitrate for a current content segment is based upon an estimated current network bandwidth, constraints of a buffer into which downloaded content segments are stored, and also upon quality scores associated with content segments within a selected horizon extending from the current content segment to a future content segment in the content stream at an endpoint of the horizon. Each content segment with the determined bitrate for the content segment is downloaded from the content server.

Quality optimization with buffer and horizon constraints in adaptive streaming

In one embodiment, a method includes identifying a current encoding rate requested by a client device for content received from a content source, setting at a network device a rate limit to limit the rate at which the content is received at the client device based on the current encoding rate, and adjusting the rate limit based on changes in the current encoding rate. The rate limit is set to allow the client device to change the current encoding rate to a next higher available encoding rate.

Growing community of inventors

Newton, MA, United States of America

Joshua B Gahm