Method and apparatus for dynamically forming multimedia emulated local area networks

Abstract

A temporary multimedia ELAN is formed on top of one or more existing ELANs between those end-stations (121-1, 121-2, 111-1) participating in a multimedia session, such as a video conference, at the time of initiating the session. At the end of the session the temporary ELAN is torn down. When the temporary ELAN is created an available LAN Emulation Server (LES) (241) and an available Broadcast and Unknown Server (BUS) (243) are allocated to serve those end-stations participating in the multimedia session. The BUS also serves as a multicast server to multicast a multimedia stream from one end-station to each other end-station on the temporary ELAN. The initiator of a session accesses a Multimedia Session Manager (401), which oversees and manages the session and coordinates the necessary resources. An ELAN Configuration (402) serves to dynamically assign IP addresses to end-stations to ensure that each end-station on the temporary ELAN is on a single subnet, to receive the configuration attributes of each end-station that is to be connected on the temporary ELAN, to find an available LES and BUS to serve the temporary multimedia ELAN, and to coordinate establishment of the temporary ELAN between the end-stations. Once the temporary ELAN has been formed, a Conference Configurator (403) starts executing a multimedia application already existing on each end-station or sends the executables of the selected multimedia application in real time to each end-station. During the session the Multimedia Session Manager is used to add a new end-station, drop an end-station, and terminate the session.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.