Unobtrusive content compression in a telecommunications network

摘要

A telecommunications network policy enforcing point operable to route IP datagrams in a two-way communication between a first endpoint in a telecommunications network and a second endpoint in the telecommunications network and operable to compress, in accordance with a data compression policy, IP datagrams of a response transmitted by the second endpoint to the first endpoint. The response is of a layer 7 protocol that supports compression, a layer level being an Open Systems Interconnection, OSI, layer in an OSI Reference Model, and each IP datagram of the response comprises a sequence of bytes of data and a header defining a sequence number of the first byte of data in the IP datagram.

主权项

1. A telecommunications network policy enforcing point configured to route Internet Protocol (IP) datagrams in a two-way communication between a first endpoint in a telecommunications network and a second endpoint in the telecommunications network and configured to compress, in accordance with a data compression policy, IP datagrams of a response transmitted by the second endpoint to the first endpoint, each IP datagram comprising a sequence of bytes of data and a header defining a sequence number of the first byte of data in the IP datagram, the response being of a layer 7 protocol that supports compression, a layer level being an Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) layer in an OSI Reference Model, the telecommunications network policy enforcing point comprising:
a datagram inspection module configured to determine whether IP datagrams sent from the second endpoint and received by the policy enforcing point are uncompressed but can be compressed in accordance with the data compression policy by inspecting, in at least one of the received IP datagrams, control information of the layer 7 protocol which is located beyond an IP 5 tuple in the IP datagram; a data compression module configured to compress data in at least one of the received IP datagrams in response to the datagram inspection module determining that the received IP datagrams are uncompressed but can be compressed, thereby generating compressed IP datagrams for transmission to the first endpoint; a header modification module configured to modify the headers in the compressed IP datagrams to take into account a reduction in the number of bytes in at least one preceding IP datagram caused by compression of the data therein by the data compression module so as to ensure a continuity of said sequence numbers between adjacent compressed IP datagrams in the response transmitted by the second endpoint to the first endpoint; a communication module configured to transmit the compressed IP datagrams to the first endpoint and receive therefrom acknowledgements of receipt of the compressed IP datagrams; and the header modification module being further configured to generate, in response to receipt of said acknowledgements by the communication module, acknowledgments of receipt of the corresponding uncompressed IP datagrams for transmission by the communication module to the second endpoint.