Opportunistically delayed delivery in a satellite network

摘要

Systems and methods are described for using opportunistically delayed delivery of content to address sub-optimal bandwidth resource usage in network infrastructures that allow subscribers to share forward link resources. According to some embodiments, content is identified as delayable and assigned to a delaycast queue and/or service flow. For example, a server system of a satellite communications system identifies content that can be delayed to exploit future excess link capacity through multicasting and to exploit subscriber-side storage resources. Some implementations attempt to exploit any excess link resources at any time, while others exploit unused bandwidth only during certain times or when a certain threshold of resources is available. Various embodiments also provide content scoring and/or other prioritization techniques for optimizing exploitation of the delaycast queue.

主权项

1. A system for delayed content delivery in a communications infrastructure, the system comprising:
a request handler subsystem that determines whether a content object is a delayable object with respect to at least one of a plurality of subscribers; a communications processing subsystem, disposed at a provider side of the communications infrastructure, that:
assigns the delayable object to a delaycast queue having a plurality of queued content objects determined to be delayable objects; andschedules the plurality of queued content objects for multicasting over opportunistic capacity as opportunistic capacity becomes available on a communications link of the communications infrastructure.