| Patent application number | Description | Published |
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| 20080317040 | MANAGING HIERARCHICALLY ORGANIZED SUBSCRIBER PROFILES - Apparatus are provided for managing hierarchically organized subscriber profiles. According to one embodiment, a router includes multiple virtual interfaces and a policy engine. The virtual interfaces define connections between the router and corresponding subscribers of a service provider. A first virtual interface is operable to receive packets from a first subscriber and to process the packets in accordance with a first-level profile identifier. The policy engine is coupled with the virtual interfaces and operable to de-reference subscriber profiles of the subscribers on behalf of the virtual interfaces based on a database of hierarchically organized profile identifiers. The database includes multiple lower-level profile identifiers, which explicitly define subscriber services, and multiple first-level profile identifiers, which define service contexts representing combinations of services available to subscribers when connected to the service provider by (i) explicitly defining the subscriber services or (ii) referring to one or more of the lower-level profile identifiers. | 12-25-2008 |
| 20080317231 | MANAGING HIERARCHICALLY ORGANIZED SUBSCRIBER PROFILES - Methods are provided for managing hierarchically organized subscriber profiles. According to one embodiment, subscriber services are modified without requiring a change to the subscriber's first-level profile identifier and without requiring the subscriber to reestablish a connection with the service provider. A database of hierarchically organized profile identifiers, including multiple lower-level profile identifiers, explicitly defining subscriber services, and multiple first-level profile identifiers, defining service contexts representing combinations of services available to subscribers by (i) explicitly defining the subscriber services or (ii) referring to one or more of the lower-level profile identifiers, are maintained within a virtual router operable within a telecommunications system of the service provider. Updated service profile information, representing a change to the subscriber's service context, is received. Responsive the updated service profile information, lower-level profile identifiers currently associated with the subscriber's first-level profile identifier are replaced with lower-level profile identifiers corresponding to the updated service profile information. | 12-25-2008 |
| 20080320553 | MANAGING HIERARCHICALLY ORGANIZED SUBSCRIBER PROFILES - Methods are provided for managing hierarchically organized subscriber profiles. According to one embodiment of the present invention, a subscriber connection is created with a virtual router operable within a telecommunications system of a service provider. A connection request is received from a subscriber of multiple subscribers of the service provider at a subscriber manager of the virtual router. The virtual router maintains a database of hierarchically organized profile identifiers, including multiple lower-level profile identifiers, which explicitly define subscriber services, and multiple first-level profile identifiers, which define service contexts representing combinations of services available to subscribers when connected by (i) explicitly defining the subscriber services or (ii) referring to one or more of the multiple lower-level profile identifiers. If the subscriber is successfully authenticated, a connection is created by creating and configuring a virtual interface within the virtual router for the subscriber connection based on the subscriber's first-level profile identifier. | 12-25-2008 |
| 20090007228 | MANAGING HIERARCHICALLY ORGANIZED SUBSCRIBER PROFILES - Apparatus are provided for managing hierarchically organized subscriber profiles. According to one embodiment, a router includes a subscriber manager, a database and a virtual interface. The subscriber manager is operable to receive a connection request from a subscriber of a service provider. The database has stored therein hierarchically organized profile identifiers, including multiple lower-level profile identifiers, which explicitly define subscriber services, and multiple first-level profile identifiers, which define service contexts representing combinations of services available to subscribers when connected to the service provider by (i) explicitly defining the subscriber services or (ii) referring to one or more of the plurality of lower-level profile identifiers. The virtual interface defines a subscriber connection between the router and the subscriber and is created and configured responsive to the connection request based on a first-level profile identifier that is associated with the subscriber. | 01-01-2009 |
| 20100142527 | Scalable IP-Services Enabled Multicast Forwarding with Efficient Resource Utilization - Methods and apparatus are provided for managing multicast Internet Protocol (IP) flows. According to one embodiment, a multicast IP flow is identified at an interface of a network device using information from a packet header. For any newly identified multicast IP flow, if flow-specific services are required, a new first transmit control block (TCB), which includes one or more attributes relating to flow-specific services required by the newly identified multicast IP flow, is created for the newly identified multicast IP flow. Otherwise, if flow-specific services are not required by the newly identified multicast IP flow, a default second TCB, which excludes any attributes relating to flow-specific services and which includes one or more attributes related to a virtual interface (VI) serving as an outbound interface (OIF) for the newly identified multicast IP flow, is used. | 06-10-2010 |
| 20110122872 | SCALABLE IP-SERVICES ENABLED MULTICAST FORWARDING WITH EFFICIENT RESOURCE UTILIZATION - Methods, apparatus and data structures are provided for managing multicast IP flows. According to one embodiment, a network switch module includes a memory and multiple processors partitioned among multiple virtual routers (VRs). Each VR maintains a data structure including information relating to multicast sessions handled by the VR and including a first pointer for each multicast session, a chain of blocks of second pointers and one or more TCBs. Each first pointer points to a chain of blocks of second pointers. Each second pointer corresponds to an OIF of the VR participating in the multicast session defined by the first pointer and defines how many times to replicate packets associated with the multicast session. The TCBs store control information relevant to processing or routing packets. Each second pointer points to a TCB, which identifies the OIF out which packets of the multicast session are transmitted from the VR. | 05-26-2011 |
| 20110235548 | MANAGING HIERARCHICALLY ORGANIZED SUBSCRIBER PROFILES - Methods are provided for managing hierarchically organized subscriber profiles. According to one embodiment, a policy engine of a VR defines services available to subscribers in terms of profile identifiers. A scalable subscriber profile database is established having a memory requirement dependent upon the number of available service contexts by hierarchically organizing profile identifiers as leaf profile identifiers, which explicitly define services, and intermediate profile identifiers, which indirectly represent services. The policy engine receives a first-level profile identifier and determines whether it is among those stored in the database. If not, then it obtains service profile information associated with the first-level profile identifier. If the first-level profile identifier is an intermediate profile identifier having leaf profile identifiers, then it further obtains them and associated profile information and stores this information in the database. The first-level profile identifier and the associated service profile information are also stored in the database. | 09-29-2011 |
