| 摘要 |
<p>An arrangement is disclosed for providing an account identifier from a billing system to a controller that is disposed at the headend (705) of a wide area network ("WAN") (712) that supports a media content distribution service. In illustrative examples, the WAN (712) is a broadband network to which one or more terminal devices (732, 735<SUB>X</SUB>) such as STBs are coupled. The billing system (743) generates a unique household handle ("HHH"), to identify a particular set of STBs that are associated with a subscriber to the service, which is transmitted to the controller. The controller (719) uses the HHH to prepare a terminal association identifier ("TAI") that is distributed to the associated STBs. An application programming interface ("API") resident on each STB is arranged to accept input parameters from one or more applications that run on the STB. The input parameter is typically concatenated with the stored TAI and input to a hashing algorithm. The resultant hashed value is returned to an application and is usable as password to secure a local area network to which the STBs are coupled.</p> |
