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:
Dec. 31, 2002
Filed:
Sep. 17, 2001
Ahti Muhonen, Helsinki, FI;
Michael Rooke, Espoo, FI;
Nokia Networks Oy, Espoo, FI;
Abstract
The present invention relates to a method and network element for forwarding a multicast message received from an external packet data network (PDN) to subscribers (MS) of a packet radio network, wherein a subscriber-specific information defining multicast messages to be received by the subscribers is stored in a network element (GGSN) of the packet radio network. Based on this subscriber-specific information, a point to point connection is established between the multicast content provider of the multicast message and a subscriber having joined the corresponding multicast group. The subscriber may request a list of available multicast groups from the network element and may inform the network element of the multicast messages he wants to listen to by using a point to point context activation. Thus, the network element which may be a gateway GPRS support node plays an arbitrator role for multicast messages. Thereby, only minor changes of standard network elements are required.