Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Microsoft Corporation

William F Schiefelbein

Anders Edgar Klemets

Cyrus Kanga

Daniel F Plastina

David Del Val

Troy Batterberry

Hemanth Srinivas Ravi

Kasy Srinivas

Thomas B Brown

Anupam Sahai

Kathleen Patricia Mulcahy

Jason S Flaks

Shiraz Jitendra Cupala

Zhangwei Xu

Szymon Piotr Stachniak

Kenneth Alan Lobb

Eduardo P Oliveira

Jason Robert Tuck

Neil Warren Black

Russell P Songco

Sanjay Bhatt

Mario Esposito

James H Dooley, Iv

James T Walter

John Darren Elliott

Clinton Chi-Wen Woon

Srinivas Aiyar

Joshua C Zana

Howard Benjamin Nager

Alexander D Tudor

Heather Grantham Brodie

Matthew Alan Medak

Cyrus R Kanga

Jr Pessner Ronald Oswin

Howard B Nager

Dan Plastina

Iv James H Dooley

Alexander James Soule

Marc Victor Haddah

Ronald Oswin Pessner Jr

Eric Christopher Voreis

An arrangement is provided in which a Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) device exposes a service for mapping a UPnP discovered content item to a server message block (SMB) location. The service is arranged to expose an SMB share path to a user at a remote client using a UPnP protocol. The user is then enabled with access to the share via SMB to gain file access, write changes or exercise file level control of the discovered content item. Authentication is optionally utilized to verify that the user is authorized to receive the SMB share location from the service or to verify that the user is authorized to access the SMB share.

Mapping universal plug and play discovered items to an SMB location

An arrangement is provided in which a Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) device exposes a service for mapping a UPnP discovered content item to a server message block (SMB) location. The service is arranged to expose an SMB share path to a user at a remote client using a UPnP protocol, The user is then enabled with access to the share via SMB to gain file access, write changes or exercise file level control of the discovered content item. Authentication is optionally utilized to verify that the user is authorized to receive the SMB share location from the service or to verify that the user is authorized to access the SMB share.

A source device permits a user of a remote device to access a protected file on the source device when the user of the remote device has a right to access the protected file. The user locates the protected file on the source device using the remote device and accesses the protected file using a media player on the remote device. The media player constructs a path by which the source device streams the protected file. The remote device responds to an authentication request from the source device that the user of the remote device has a right to access the protected file. The user is authenticated to confirm that the user of the remote device has a right to access the protected file. The protected file is streamed to the remote device via a path constructed by the remote device.

Remotely accessing protected files via streaming

Methods and arrangements are provided that integrate media streaming and Quality of Service (QoS) supportive protocols, such as, e.g., Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) and Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP), respectively, in a manner that significantly reduces a session's startup latency as well as providing a higher quality of service that is experienced by an end user. The methods and arrangements selectively initiate the streaming of the media data as soon as possible, perhaps at an initially lower QoS, while simultaneously setting up a more desirable or applicable guaranteed QoS path. The methods and arrangements can be implemented in an intelligent manner to dynamically and/or selectively modify the streaming media in response to various network congestion problems, etc. A different/dynamic QoS capability may be setup during an existing streaming operation, and the streaming operation modified accordingly once the new QoS set-up has been completed. The methods and arrangements can provide such capabilities without significantly disturbing the user's experience.

Media streaming techniques and systems

The fast dynamic measurement of connection bandwidth utilizes a single pair of packets to calculate bandwidth between two entities on a network (such as the Internet). This calculation is based upon the packet-pair technique. This bandwidth measurement is extremely quick. On its journey across a network, communication equipment and modems may compress a packet. This compression shrinks the size of the packet; thus, it can distort the bandwidth calculation using such a shrunken packet. To avoid this distortion, the fast dynamic measurement of connection bandwidth employs non-compressible packets. More specifically, it employs highly entropic packets. Therefore, a packet cannot be compressed during its journey. In addition, on its journey across a network, packets may be rerouted, delayed, misrouted, and the like. These momentary delays may result in a momentary bad bandwidth calculation. This problem is ameliorated by using a history list at the client that keeps track of recent measurements. The client returns the median of that list to the server. That median is the specified bandwidth.

Fast dynamic measurement of connection bandwidth using a pair of packets, a packet-pair bandwidth calculation and a list of recent bandwidth measurements

Fast dynamic measurement of connection bandwidth using at least a pair of non-compressible packets having measurable characteristics

Media streaming methods and arrangements

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Sammamish, WA, United States of America

William F Schiefelbein