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:
May. 13, 2003
Filed:
Oct. 14, 1999
Navin Chaddha, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA (US);
Abstract
A method of interactively providing a number of client computers with a dynamically selectable and scalable range of multimedia data over a diverse computer network including local area networks (LANs) wide area networks (WANs) such as the internet. Multimedia data is provided by a server to the client computers includes a base layer and one or more enhancement layers. Enhancement layers can be spatial and/or temporal in nature. Depending on the implementation, the server may also provide information about the multimedia data to the client computers. The server splits the multimedia data for streaming via multiple multicast group (MMG) addresses. Information about the portion of the multimedia data carried by each MMG is broadcasted to the client computers. Armed with the information about the multimedia data, client computers can intelligently join and leave MMGs as needed. In some embodiments, the client computers provide feedback about the usage and/or need for the multimedia data, enabling the server to right-size, e.g., grow and/or prune, the multimedia data for network efficiency. Enhancement layers may also be grown and/or pruned independently of the base layer, i.e., without a corresponding change in the base layer.