Patent Application

App. No. 11/223,291

Abstract

Claims (71)

1 . A method of transmitting data from a remote site to a destination site comprising:

a. generating at a regional site a list of combinations of resources for transmitting data from the remote site to the destination site;

b. measuring at the regional site statistics for transmitting data from the remote site to the regional site using each combination of resources from the list;

c. selecting at the regional site a combination of resources from the list based on the statistics; and

d. configuring the remote site to transmit data to the destination site using the selected combination of resources.

2 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising transmitting from the regional site to the remote site a decision packet containing information corresponding to the selected combination of resources.

3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the resources in the list are any one or more of a medium able to accommodate a pre-defined bandwidth, a router, a tunnel, and a network.

4 . The method of claim 3 , wherein the router is any one of a multi-protocol label switching router, a type-of-service enabled router, a differentiated service marker enabled router, and a source routing enabled router.

5 . The method of claim 3 , wherein the network comprises any one or more of an asynchronous transfer mode network, private networks, private lines, digital subscriber lines, Integrated Services Digital Networks, and wireless components.

6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the statistics comprise any one or more of a delay, a jitter, a loss, a mean time between failures, a reliability indicator, a bandwidth estimation, and an availability score.

7 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the statistics are used to compute metrics used to select the combination of resources.

8 . The method of claim 1 , wherein measuring statistics comprises:

a. transmitting to the remote site a combination packet that contains information corresponding to a combination of resources from the list; and

b. transmitting from the remote site to the regional site a measurement packet in response to receiving the combination packet on the remote site.

9 . The method of claim 8 , wherein the combination packet also contains a measurement code for taking an action on the remote site.

10 . The method of claim 9 , wherein the measurement code corresponds to setting one of a size of one or more measurement packets, an Internet Protocol version number for transmitting a measurement packet, and a time between measurement packet transmissions.

11 . The method of claim 8 , wherein the measurement packet is a user datagram protocol packet.

12 . The method of claim 11 , wherein the user datagram protocol packet is an Internet Control Message Protocol message.

13 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the remote site comprises one of a personal computer, an Internet enabled telephone, a personal digital assistant, a pager, an Internet appliance, an application server, a Linux server, a media gateway, a video conference end point, and a branch gateway.

14 . The method of claim 1 , wherein any two or more of the remote site, the regional site, and the destination site are coupled by the Internet.

15 . The method of claim 1 , wherein any two or more of the remote site, the regional site, and the destination site are coupled by a plurality of Internet Service Providers.

16 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the regional site is the destination site.

17 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising registering an identifier for the remote site at a registration server.

18 . The method of claim 17 , further comprising retrieving from the registration server the identifier for the remote site.

19 . The method of claim 17 , further comprising monitoring the registration server to recover the identifier for the remote site.

20 . The method of claim 1 , wherein an identifier for the remote site comprises a dynamically allocated user datagram protocol port.

21 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the remote site is configured to transmit data to the destination site using a default combination of resources after a pre-determined time.

22 . A system for routing data comprising:

a. a regional site comprising:

i. a generator for generating information corresponding to at least one combination of resources;

ii. a calculator for calculating a metric related to a transmission from a remote site to the regional site using a combination of resources; and

iii. a selector for selecting a combination of resources based on metrics related to transmissions from a remote site to the regional site using the at least one combination of resources; and

b. a remote site for transmitting data to a destination site using the at least one combination of resources.

23 . The system of claim 22 , wherein the regional site further comprises:

iv. a combination table storing information corresponding to combinations of resources; and

v. a statistics table for storing metrics corresponding to the combinations of resources.

24 . The system of claim 22 , wherein the remote site comprises a routing policy table for storing the selected combination of resources.

25 . The system of claim 22 , wherein the at least one combination of resources is any one or more of a medium able to accommodate a pre-defined bandwidth, a router, an asynchronous transfer mode network, a private network, a private line, personal computer, a media gateway, a Linux server, an inter-router hop, an application server, and a tunnel.

26 . The system of claim 25 , wherein the router is one of a multi-protocol label switching router, a type-of-service enabled router, a differentiated service enabled router, and a source routing enabled router.

27 . The system of claim 25 , wherein the tunnel is one of a Generic Routing Encapsulation tunnel, and a Virtual Private Network tunnel, an Internet-Protocol to Internet-Protocol tunnel, and a Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol tunnel.

28 . The system of claim 25 , wherein the tunnel is an application layer tunnel.

29 . The system of claim 28 , wherein the application layer tunnel is formed between two or more media gateways.

30 . The system of claim 22 , wherein the regional site further comprises a decision packet formatter for formatting and transmitting a decision packet corresponding to the selected combination of resources.

31 . The system of claim 22 , wherein the regional site further comprises a combination packet formatter for formatting and transmitting a combination packet containing information corresponding to the selected combination of resources.

32 . The system of claim 22 , wherein the remote site further comprises a measurement packet formatter.

33 . The system of claim 22 , wherein the metric is computed using any one or more of a delay, a jitter, a loss, a mean time between failures, a reliability indicator, a bandwidth estimation, and an availability score.

34 . The system of claim 22 , wherein the remote site, the regional site, and the destination site are coupled by the Internet.

35 . The system of claim 22 , wherein the remote site comprises one of a personal computer, an Internet enabled telephone, a personal digital assistant, a pager, and an Internet appliance.

36 . The system of claim 22 , further comprising a fourth site that functions as a proxy for the second site.

37 . A regional site comprising:

a. a generator for generating information corresponding to a first combination of resources;

b. a calculator for calculating a metric related to a transmission from a remote site to a destination site using the first combination of resources; and

c. a selector for selecting a combination of resources based on a metric related to the selected combination of resources.

38 . The regional site of claim 37 , wherein the first combination of resources comprises at least one of a bandwidth, a router, and a tunnel.

39 . The regional site of claim 38 , wherein the router is any one of a multi-protocol label switching router, a type-of-service enabled router, a differentiated service enabled router, and a source routing enabled router.

40 . The regional site of claim 37 , wherein the regional site comprises one of a personal computer, an Internet Protocol enabled telephone, a personal digital assistant, and a pager.

41 . A remote site comprising:

a. a first module for receiving a first packet containing information corresponding to a combination of resources and transmitting a second packet using the combination of resources; and

b. a second module for receiving a decision packet containing information corresponding to a selected combination of resources and for routing data using the selected combination of resources.

42 . The remote site of claim 41 , further comprising a routing policy table for transmitting data packets to a destination site using the selected combination of resources.

43 . A method of determining a combination of resources for transmitting data from a remote site to a destination site comprising:

a. determining on a regional site a first metric related to a first combination of resources for transmitting data from the remote site to a regional site to the destination site;

b. determining on the regional site a second metric related to a second combination of resources for transmitting data from the remote site to the regional site to the destination site; and

c. selecting one of the first combination of resources and the second combination of resources for transmitting data from the remote site to the destination site, the selection based on a selection criteria using the first metric and the second metric.

44 . A method of selecting a combination of resources for transmitting data from a first site to a second site comprising:

a. determining a first metric corresponding to transmitting data from the first site, to the second site, and to a regional site using a first combination of resources;

b. determining a second metric corresponding to transmitting data from the first site to the regional site; and

c. selecting a combination of resources based on a comparison between the first metric and the second metric.

45 . The method of claim 44 , wherein transmitting data from between the first site and the second site comprises application layer routing.

46 . The method of claim 44 , wherein the first site comprises one of an Internet-enabled telephone, a personal digital assistant, and a personal computer.

47 . The method of claim 44 , wherein the application layer routing comprises routing over a media gateway.

Assignments (12)