The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jan. 01, 2002
Filed:
Sep. 27, 1993
Richard Alan Diedrich, Rochester, MN (US);
Harvey Gene Kiel, Rochester, MN (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for efficient multimedia data interchange which utilizes multimedia pacing in a distributed data processing system. During a multimedia communications session, each of a plurality of receiving stations transmits multimedia pacing requests to a sending station at negotiated set time intervals. The multimedia pacing request includes information on the availability of current storage for multimedia data at the receiving station, a minimum data time remaining in storage in the receiving station and other information pertaining to the interchange of the multimedia data. The sending station then allocates various priorities to the transmission of data to the plurality of receiving stations in an order indicative of the type of data, i.e. multimedia or non-multimedia, and the information in the multimedia pacing request pertaining to the minimum data time remaining in storage at the receiving station. In addition, the sending station periodically determines the availability of the transmission queue. When the transmission queue is not readily available, the sending station transfers only high priority multimedia data to the transmission queue; however when the transmission queue is available, the sending station transfers lower priority multimedia data to the transmission queue as well. The sending station can then supply a plurality of receiving stations with significant multimedia data in advance when the communications interface is not overloaded.