Opportunistically delayed delivery in a satellite network
View Patent ↗Systems and methods are described for using opportunistically delayed delivery of content to address sub-optimal bandwidth resource usage in network infrastructures that allow subscribers to share forward link resources. According to some embodiments, content is identified as delayable and assigned to a delaycast queue and/or service flow. For example, a server system of a satellite communications system identifies content that can be delayed to exploit future excess link capacity through multicasting and to exploit subscriber-side storage resources. Some implementations attempt to exploit any excess link resources at any time, while others exploit unused bandwidth only during certain times or when a certain threshold of resources is available. Various embodiments also provide content scoring and/or other prioritization techniques for optimizing exploitation of the delaycast queue.
1. A system for delayed content delivery in a communications infrastructure, the system comprising:
a request handler subsystem that determines whether a content object is a delayable object with respect to at least one of a plurality of subscribers;
a communications processing subsystem, disposed at a provider side of the communications infrastructure, that:
assigns the delayable object to a delaycast queue having a plurality of queued content objects determined to be delayable objects; and
schedules the plurality of queued content objects for multicasting over opportunistic capacity as opportunistic capacity becomes available on a communications link of the communications infrastructure.
2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the request handler subsystem is disposed at the provider side of the communications infrastructure.
3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the request handler subsystem is disposed at a subscriber side of the communications infrastructure.
4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the request handler subsystem receives the content object in response to a request for the content object by the at least one of the plurality of subscribers.
5. The system of claim 4 , wherein the communications processing subsystem further multicasts the delayable object to the at least one requesting subscriber and to at least another of the plurality of subscribers that did not request the content object.
6. The system of claim 1 , wherein the request handler subsystem determines that a content object is a delayable object when the content object is a valid candidate for opportunistically delayed delivery to the at least one of the plurality of subscribers.
7. The system of claim 1 , wherein the communications processing subsystem further determines dynamically that the opportunistic capacity is presently available on the communications link by determining that more than a predetermined threshold amount of excess capacity is presently available on the communications link.
8. The system of claim 1 , wherein a present capacity of the communications link is determined according to a present provisioned capacity of the communications link and a present un-provisioned capacity of the communications link, and the opportunistic capacity is a presently unused portion of the present un-provisioned capacity.
9. The system of claim 1 , wherein the communications processing subsystem assigns the delayable object to the delaycast queue in a priority order, the priority determined according to a popularity of the delayable object.
10. The system of claim 1 , wherein the delaycast queue is a first-in-first-out queue.
11. A method for delayed content delivery in a communications infrastructure, the method comprising:
determining whether a content object is a delayable object with respect to at least one of a plurality of subscribers;
receiving the delayable object at a provider-side system of the communications infrastructure;
assigning, by the provider-side system, the delayable object to a delaycast queue having a plurality of queued content objects determined to be delayable objects;
scheduling, by the provider-side system, the plurality of queued content objects for communication over a communications link of the communications infrastructure; and
multicasting the plurality of queued content objects over the communications link according to the scheduling as opportunistic capacity becomes available on the communications link.
12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the determining step is performed by the provider-side system.
13. The method of claim 11 , wherein the determining step is performed by a subscriber-side system.
14. The method of claim 11 , wherein the content object is received in response to an explicit request for the content object by the at least one of the plurality of subscribers.
15. The method of claim 11 , wherein assigning the delayable object to the delaycast queue comprises determining a relative priority of the delayable object with respect to the plurality of queued content objects and assigning the delayable object to the delaycast queue according to the relative priority.
16. A method for delayed content delivery in a communications infrastructure, the method comprising:
communicating a request for a content object from a subscriber-side system of the communications infrastructure to a provider-side system of the communications infrastructure;
receiving the requested content object at the subscriber-side system from the provider-side system over a communications link of the communications infrastructure in response to the request, the requested content object received from a provider-side queue of delayable objects over opportunistically available capacity of a communications link of the communications infrastructure in a delayed timeframe according to a determination that the requested content object is a delayable object with respect to at least the requesting subscriber-side system.
17. The method of claim 16 , further comprising:
storing the requested content object at the subscriber-side system.
18. The method of claim 16 , wherein the subscriber-side system is a first subscriber-side system of a plurality of subscriber-side systems, and the requested content object is received by the subscriber-side system via a multicast communication over the communications link, and further comprising:
receiving the requested content object at a second subscriber-side system via the multicast communication, the second subscriber-side system being a non-requesting subscriber-side system determined to receive the requested content object; and
storing the requested content object at the second subscriber-side system according to the determination to receive the requested content object.
19. The method of claim 18 , wherein the determination to receive the requested content object is made by the subscriber-side system.
20. The method of claim 18 , wherein the determination to receive the requested content object is made by the provider-side system.