Communications system
OwnerJani Kokkoneninventor
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A communication system for transferring data packets between a network device located within a first network and a network device located within a second network. The data packets having a header allowing each packet to be routed independently through each node of the second network using routing information to process the header of each incoming data packer and forward the data packet to the next node. The headers of each of said data packets entering said first network at an ingress node are encapsulated by assigning at least one label to each data packet so that the data packets can be forwarded by each of the intermediate nodes based on said label without having to process the header information.
Claims14
A communication system for transferring data packets between a network device located within a first network and a network device located within a second network, said data packets having a header allowing each packet to be routed independently through each node of the second network using routing information to process the header of each incoming data packet and forward the data packet to the next node;
- wherein the headers of each of said data packets entering said first network at an ingress node are encapsulated by assigning at least one label to each data packet so that the data packets can be forwarded by each of the intermediate nodes based on said label without having to process the header information.
A system according to any preceding claim, wherein the labels that are assigned to each data packet each have a fixed length.
A system according to any preceding claim wherein each of said assigned labels comprises:
- a label field indicating the actual assigned label value used to forward said data packet;
- an experimental field used to identify a required class of service;
- a stack field to indicate whether there is another label that has been assigned to the data packet;
- a time to live field where if only one label is assigned to a data packet then this field operates as a normal hop counter, while if two labels are assigned then within the second label this field operates as a sequence counter or alternatively identifies the N-PDU if mapped from a GTP header.
A method of transferring data packets in an IP RAN:
- a base transceiver station for receiving headed data packets from said mobile station and acting as an ingress node for said radio access network by assigning at least one label to each of said data packets;
- a plurality of intermediate nodes forming said radio access network wherein each of said intermediate nodes is equipped to forward the data packets in dependence on the assigned labels.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.