US 2017/0288996 A1Published application

Network connectivity identification

AssigneeBritish Telecommunications public limited company

InventorNicholas FARROW

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Abstract

Examples of the present invention present a method of determining the network connectivity technology being used in a network link. The method sends test packets from the router to an end device, such as a set-top box, and measures the latency in the received packets at the end device. The packets are gradually increased in size. The increasing packet size effectively results in increasing the load on the network link between the router and the end device. The latency characteristics vary as a function of packet size (representing increasing network load), and result in a signature or “fingerprint” for the network connectivity technology being used for the link, across the load cycle. The signature can be compared to predetermined models to identify the specific technology used. The technique can be enabled using software modules installed at the gateway/router and at the end-point, such as a set-top box.

Claims7

Dependent claims

A method of identifying a data transmission technology used in a network link between a first node and a second node, said method comprising:

transmitting a first set of data packets from the first node to the second node over the network link, and receiving the first set of data packets at the second node, wherein the first set of data packets comprises a plurality of data packets of a first size, and the plurality of data packets are transmitted with a fixed transmitted inter-packet gap;
calculating latency values associated with the first set of data packets, wherein each latency value is equal to the difference in the received inter-packet gap of the data packet and the fixed transmitted inter-packet gap;
repeating the transmitting and calculating steps with a second set of data packets, wherein the second set of data packets comprises a plurality of data packets of a second size, and wherein the second size is different to the first size;
generating a fingerprint for the network link comprising a distribution of latency values for each packet size;
comparing the generated fingerprint with a plurality of predetermined fingerprints to determine the data transmission technology used in the network link, wherein each predetermined fingerprint corresponds to data transmission technology type.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.