US 11,445,000 B2Granted

Multicast to unicast conversion

AssigneeBritish Telecommunications public limited company

InventorsRory Turnbull, Timothy Stevens

Life of this patent

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Abstract

Presented are methods for converting a multicast media stream to unicast segments, for delivery over generic IP networks such the Internet. The unicast segments can be converted back again to a multicast stream that is identical to the original multicast stream closer to the consuming client device. Information required to regenerate a multicast stream from the generated unicast segments that is identical to the original multicast stream is also encoded into the file name of the generated unicast segments. Additionally, RTP header information from the multicast stream that is not required when the unicast segments are generated are stored in files linked to the generated unicast segments, enabling the multicast stream that is regenerated to be identical to the original multicast stream even at the RTP level.

Claims10

Dependent claims

A method of operation involving segmenting a multicast stream into unicast segments, wherein the multicast stream comprises a sequence of real time transport protocol packets, each of the real time transport protocol packets comprising a header and a payload portion, and each payload portion comprising a plurality of transport stream packets, said method comprising:

receiving the multicast stream;
generating a plurality of unicast segments comprising transport stream packets taken from the multicast stream;
encoding a plurality of portions of data into a file name of each of the unicast;
generating a header file associated with each of the unicast segments, said header file comprising the header from the real time transport protocol packets;
and
encoding into a file name of each of the header files a subset of the portions of data of the associated unicast segment;
wherein each of the transport stream packets respectively in the generated unicast segments comprises a program clock reference field, and the subset of the portions of data comprises the program clock reference field.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 17/298,205Filed 28 Nov 2019
Priority: EP 1820965530 Nov 2018
Published: US 2022/0131920 A128 Apr 2022
Granted: 13 Sep 2022
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification6 codes

H04L 65/611
For supporting one-way streaming services, e.g. Internet radio: for multicast or broadcast
H04L 65/612
For supporting one-way streaming services, e.g. Internet radio: for unicast
H04L 65/65
Network streaming of media packets: network streaming protocols, e.g. real-time transport protocol [RTP] or real-time control protocol [RTCP]
H04L 65/70
Network streaming of media packets: media network packetisation

Family

US 2022/0131920 A1Pre-grant publication · published 28 Apr 2022
US 11,445,000 B2This patent

From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.

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