[54] MECHANISMS FOR ACCESSING UNIQUE FEATURES OF TELEPHONY NETWORKS FROM A PROTOCOL-INDEPENDENT DATA TRANSPORT INTERFACE
[76] Inventors: David B. Andersen, 16520 SW.
Hillsboro Hwy., Hillsboro, Oreg. 97123; Tsung-Yuan Charles Tai, 2496 NW. 141st PI., Portland, Oreg. 97229
[21] Appl. No.: 430,460
[22] Filed: Apr. 28, 1995
[51] lilt CI.6 G06F 17/00
[52] U.S. CI 364/514 R
[58] Field of Search 364/514 R, 514 C;
370/85.7, 60.1; 395/200.17, 200.11
[56] References Cited
U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS
5,375,068 12/1994 Palmer et al 364/514 C
5,408,465 4/1995 Gusellaetsd 370/60
5,491,694 2/1996 Oliver etal 370/85.7
5,550,984 8/1996 Gelb 395/200.17
5,555,244 9/1996 Gupta et al 370/60.1
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
yang et al.; "Cell Scheduling And Bandwidth Allocation For Heterogeneous VBR Video Conferencing Traffic." Globecom 1995 Communications For Global Harmony 1995. Anastasi et al.; "service integration in crma: a simulative analysis"; infocom 1993.
In a computer video conferencing system it is often necessary to transmit multiple channels of information between remote computers, such as a video channel, an audio channel and data sharing channel. A socket based transport interface can be utilized to establish communication channels between remote computers over a connection oriented telephony network A plurality of sockets are created at each endpoint, one for each type of data stream to be transferred between the computers. The sockets are formed into a group to indicate to the computer transport service provider that the data streams from the sockets can utilize the same telephony connection, and a quality-of-service specification is associated with the socket group so that the telephony connection can be established according to the requirements of the socket group. If a new data stream needs to be transmitted and there is already a telephony connection established, a new socket is created and added to the existing socket group. If the newly added socket significantly affects the quality-of-service requirements of the socket group, a new quality-of-service may be negotiated with the telephony network.
13 Claims, 5 Drawing Sheets
