On-demand-TV in a High Speed Bundled Access Network

This invention discloses a different approach, using IP based transport and IP-multicast and forwarding. The customer subscribes to the delivery tree of a particular channel before this channel is transported to said customer. Therefore the network operates in an 'on-demand delivery' mode. Various protocols are known to achieve this over so called Non Broadcast Multiple Access networks. Due to the inverse multiplexing methodology, these known protocols are not compliant with a High Speed Bundled Access network.

Applications

Due to the flexibility these systems and methods offer, they would be extremely useful to any company involved in managing network traffic or manufacturing network equipment.

Technical Summary

The main problem is how to arrange the multicast subscription within the radio mesh network when the data flows to the subscriber are inverse multiplexed. The solution is to distribute the subscription process over all radio mesh network elements. In the accompanying figure, host 4, who wishes to subscribe to e.g. CNN, establishes a branch from the mesh network multicast source to itself by sending an "ICMP_Report" message to the IP multicast router. As in the case of HBA, all inverse multiplex elements receive all data for host 4. Due to the inverse multiplexing process there must be a branch from all mesh network elements to host 4. This means sending an "NMCP_Join" message to all mesh network elements.