DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 1-10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Appleby et al. (hereinafter ‘Appleby’, GB 2586637) in view of Mao et al. (hereinafter ‘Mao’, Pub. No. 2015/0288733).
Regarding claims 1 and 10, Appleby teaches a system network element (with corresponding method) (elements of Multicast Assisted Unicast Delivery network 300, Fig. 3: Proxies; multicast controller) for managing content delivery to a client device (204a-c, Fig. 2; 304a-c; Fig. 3), said content comprising a sequence of segments and wherein each of the segments is encoded at a plurality of quality levels, said network element adapted to:
receive unicast requests for segments encoded at one or more of the quality levels from a client device, forward the requests to a unicast content source, receive the requested segments, and transmit the requested segments to the client device by unicast (page 5 lines 3-5; page 7 lines 24-35);
determine the time taken to receive each given segment and the size of each given segment, and estimate a delivery rate for each given segment as the quotient of the size of the segment and the time taken to receive the segment (page 5 lines 3-5; page 8 lines 7-20; page lines 1-13);
determine a bandwidth estimate as an average of the estimated delivery rates (page 8 lines 7-20; page 9 lines 1-13);
join a multicast channel, receiving segments over multicast, and transmit segments requested by the client device to the client device by unicast (page 8 lines 7-20; page 9 lines 1-32; page 10 lines 34-36).
On the other hand, Appleby does not explicitly
calculate an ABR level metric based on the number of unicast requests from the client device for content segments at the quality level delivered over the multicast channel;
determine to leave the multicast channel in dependence on the bandwidth and the quality level metric;
leave the multicast channel, receiving segment requests over unicast, and forward the requests to a unicast content source, receive the requested segments, and
transmit the requested segments to the client device by unicast.
However, in an analogous art, Mao teaches a system that allows hybrid content delivery through network element (proxies, local elements, multicast controller) to a given client. A user requests content segments which are first delivered as unicast
via proxies. If more than a threshold number of users request the same content,
the proxies or the gateways join a multicast channel for receiving the content
and deliver it as unicast to the clients. When the number of users requesting the
same content falls below a threshold, the proxies or the gateways leave the
multicast channel and revert to delivering content to the users via unicast page 10, [0088]-[0089]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Appleby’s invention with Mao’s feature of determining leaving a multicast stream to continue with unicast for the benefit of releasing network resources when not needed, for delivery optimization.
Regarding claim 2, Appleby and Mao teach wherein determining to leave comprises comparing the quality level metric to a threshold, and where the threshold is dependent on the determined bandwidth (Mao: [0089]).
Regarding claim 3, Appleby and Mao teach wherein the threshold is higher when the determined bandwidth is lower and threshold is lower when the determined bandwidth is higher (Appleby: page 8 line 1 to page 10 line 37. Mao: [0083]).
Regarding claim 4, Appleby and Mao teach wherein the threshold is further dependent on the time since joining the multicast channel (Appleby: page 8 line 1 to page 10 line 37. Mao: [0083]).
Regarding claim 5, Appleby and Mao teach wherein the threshold is higher when the time since joining the multicast channel is lower, and the threshold is lower when the time since joining the multicast channel is higher (Appleby: page 8 line 1 to page 10 line 37. Mao: [0089]).
Regarding claim 6, Appleby and Mao teach wherein determining to leave comprises determining if the quality level metric is less than the threshold, and leaving the multicast channel when quality level metric is less than the threshold (Mao: [0088]; [0089]).
Regarding claim 7, Appleby and Mao teach wherein the respective quality level metric is higher when the number of unicast requests at the quality level delivered over the multicast channel is higher, and the respective quality level metric is lower when the number of unicast requests at the quality level delivered over the multicast channel is lower (Appleby: page 8 line 1 to page 10 line 37. Mao: [0089]).
Regarding claim 8, Appleby and Mao teach wherein the respective quality level metric is higher when the unicast requests at the quality level delivered over the multicast channel are more recent, and the respective quality level metric is lower when the unicast requests at the quality level delivered over the multicast channel are older (Appleby: page 9 lines 7-9).
Regarding claim 9, Appleby and Mao teach further comprises forwarding one or more of the requests from the client device to a unicast content source, receiving the requested segments over unicast, and updating the bandwidth using the bit rate at which the one or more segments is received by the network element (Appleby: page 9 lines 1-19).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to OMAR S PARRA whose telephone number is (571)270-1449. The examiner can normally be reached M-F: Mostly 10-6PM.
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/OMAR S PARRA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2421
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