Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Rajesh Sundaram

Deepak Bansal

Benjamin M Schultz

David G Thaler

Dmitry A Anipko

Shreedhar Madhavapeddi

Arvind M Murching

Georgios Chrysanthakopoulos

Joseph M Joy

Yoram Bernet

Khawar Zuberi

John S Holmes

Mathias Jourdain

Aaron J Schrader

Sanjay N Kaniyar

Henry L Sanders

Eric Lynn Eilebrecht

Shivakumar Seetharaman

Anish Desai

Eric B Stenson

George V Reilly

Disclosed are an approach form managing and assigning addresses in a connectivity platform that allows for proprietary connectivity modules (Providers) to plug into the operating system. In this disclosure, when a user/application/computing device, connects to another user on another computing device an address is generated for that user. However, because of a limited number of addresses that are available in an address space, it is necessary to ensure that a conflicting address is not present. To ensure this the connectivity platform determines if the address assigned is in conflict with another address associated with users that are located on the other computing devices. If an address is found to be in conflict the connectivity platform reassigns the address until a non-conflicting address is found. If a non-conflicting address cannot be found the connectivity platform blocks the connection between the user and the other user.

Address management in a connectivity platform

Disclosed are a connectivity platform that allows for proprietary connectivity modules to plug into the operating system and also allows the operating system users and various existing networking applications in the operating system that are authorized by those providers to use that connectivity via existing APIs without the need for the applications to change or for extra configuration of the application to be performed. In an example disclosed herein, the providers provide NAT or firewall traversal and implement the appropriate transport mechanism. This allows for applications and computing devices to communicate in environments where connectivity is prevented by intermediate systems.

Connectivity platform

An access control mechanism in a network connecting one or more sink devices to a server providing audio/visual data (A/V) in streams. As a sink device requests access, the server measures available bandwidth to the sink device. If the measurement of available bandwidth is completed before the sink device requests a stream of audio/visual data, the measured available bandwidth is used to set transmission parameters of the data stream in accordance with a Quality of Service (QoS) policy. If the measurement is not completed when the data stream is requested, the data stream is nonetheless transmitted. In this scenario, the data stream may be transmitted using parameters computed using a cached measurement of the available bandwidth to the sink device. If no cached measurement is available, the data stream is transmitted with a low priority until a measurement can be made. Once the measurement is available, the transmission parameters of the data stream are re-set. With this access control mechanism, A/V streams may be provided with low latency but with transmission parameters accurately set in accordance with the QoS policy.

Quality of service support for A/V streams

Methods and computer program products are disclosed for providing QoS for Web applications via an internet service application programming interface 'ISAPI') filter running on an internet information server, wherein the ISAPI filter uses a traffic control application programming interface to manage bandwidth for individual HTTP requests. Responses to HTTP requests can be prioritized based on policies defined by the Web application developer, wherein policy decisions may be made based on many different parameters, such as, for example, the IP address of the Web browser making the request, the type of browser being used, HTTP 'cookies,' the uniform resource locator being requested, an authenticated user ID, or any other information that is exposed from the internet information server through server variables. The present invention accomplishes this with no modifications to the internet information server, and &#x2022;with very minimal changes to the Web application.

Methods and computer program products for providing network quality of service for world wide web applications

A high-resolution, per-packet measurement tool for analyzing a computer network that operates by sending a predetermined number of packets from a sender machine to a receiver machine with measurement information inserted into the packet. The system kernel at the sending machine stamps a sequence number and the sender's local time into the data section of each packet. When packets arrive at the receiver machine, they are similarly stamped by the receiving machine's kernel with the receiving machine's local time. The maintained packet information serves as the basis for latency analysis. For example, one set of latencies can be obtained with QoS mechanisms turned on, and another set with QoS mechanisms turned off, whereby the benefits of the QoS mechanisms can be accurately determined. To analyze the latencies, the present invention normalizes each time and each latency into relative latency information. Clock skew and timer jumps may be handled as part of the normalization.

Method and system for accurately calculating latency variation on an end-to-end path in a network

A namespace management module utilizes a persistent reservation store that associates URI namespaces with one or more permissions. The reservation store can contain a number of reservation entries that each include a URI identifying a URI namespace and a corresponding Access Control List ('ACLs') that includes permissions for the identified URI namespace. When a request to register a URI namespace is received, the permissions of an appropriate ACL can be checked to determine if the registration is approved. When a resource request is received, permissions of the ACLs can also be checked to determine if the resource request should be routed to a registered process. Preemptive wildcards can be included in aggregated URIs to identify aggregated URI namespaces. Aggregated URIs can be included in registration requests to override the registration of unauthorized processes.

Securing uniform resource identifier namespaces

The invention provides quality-of-service (QoS) delivery services over a computer bus having isochronous data transfer capabilities. A transmitting node on the bus transmits a message to an intended recipient indicating a requested bandwidth for a connection. If the intended recipient has sufficient resources, it allocates an isochronous data channel on the bus and notifies the transmitter of the allocated channel. Thereafter, the transmitter transmits the data on the allocated channel. If the recipient cannot allocate a channel, it does not respond, and the transmitter thereafter detects a time-out condition and begins transmitting using a 'best efforts' scheme (i.e., non-guaranteed time delivery). In a second variation, a receiving node detects that it is receiving large quantities of data from a transmitting node. In response, the receiving node allocates an isochronous data channel on the bus and notifies the transmitter of the allocated channel. Thereafter, the transmitter transmits using the allocated isochronous channel. In a third variation, multiple receiving nodes that need to receive streaming data from a single transmitting node share a common isochronous data channel. In any of these variations, each receiver can periodically transmit a 'deadman' timer message on a broadcast channel to indicate that it is still receiving on a given channel. If a transmitter detects that the deadman timer has expired, it reverts to transmitting data using a &#x201c;best-efforts&#x201d; scheme. A transmitter can transmit both to receivers that can handle QoS services and those that cannot explicitly support QoS services.

Method and apparatus for providing quality-of-service delivery facilities over a bus

A method is described for measuring the jitter experienced by an application's network traffic. The measurement is based solely on packets sent or received by the application itself. The method does not alter the application's packets, in particular, it does not add a timestamp to the packets before they are sent. Instead, it creates a table that stores unique identifiers of the application's packets along with the time the packets are sent. On the receiving computer, a similar table is created that stores the unique packet identifiers along with the time the packets are received. Records of sent packets are associated with records of received packets so that the time a packet was sent can be compared to the time the same packet was received. The resulting data are processed to calculate network jitter and packet loss ratios.

Measuring network jitter on application packet flows

The invention provides quality-of-service (QoS) delivery services over a computer bus having isochronous data transfer capabilities. A transmitting node on the bus transmits a message to an intended recipient indicating a requested bandwidth for a connection. If the intended recipient has sufficient resources, it allocates an isochronous data channel on the bus and notifies the transmitter of the allocated channel. Thereafter, the transmitter transmits the data on the allocated channel. If the recipient cannot allocate a channel, it does not respond, and the transmitter thereafter detects a time-out condition and begins transmitting using a &ldquo;best efforts&rdquo; scheme (i.e., non-guaranteed time delivery). In a second variation, a receiving node detects that it is receiving large quantities of data from a transmitting node. In response, the receiving node allocates an isochronous data channel on the bus and notifies the transmitter of the allocated channel. Thereafter, the transmitter transmits using the allocated isochronous channel. In a third variation, multiple receiving nodes that need to receive streaming data from a single transmitting node share a common isochronous data channel. In any of these variations, each receiver can periodically transmit a &ldquo;deadman&rdquo; timer message on a broadcast channel to indicate that it is still receiving on a given channel. If a transmitter detects that the deadman timer has expired, it reverts to transmitting data using a &ldquo;best-efforts&rdquo; scheme. A transmitter can transmit both to receivers that can handle QoS services and those that cannot explicitly support QoS services.

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Rajesh Sundaram