1961 results about "Control network" patented technology

Telephone calls, data and other multimedia information is routed through a hybrid network which includes transfer of information across the internet utilizing telephony routing information and internet protocol address information. A media order entry captures complete user profile information for a user. This profile information is utilized by the system throughout the media experience for routing, billing, monitoring, reporting and other media control functions. Users can manage more aspects of a network than previously possible, and control network activities from a central site. A directory service that supports a hybrid communication system architecture is provided for routing traffic over the hybrid network and the internet and selecting a network proximal to the origination of the call.

The present invention addresses the problem of providing illumination in a manner that is energy efficient and intelligent. In particular, the present invention uses distributed processing across a network of illuminators to control the illumination for a given environment. The network controls the illumination level and pattern in response to light, sound, and motion. The network may also be trained according to uploaded software behavior modules, and subsets of the network may be organized into groups for illumination control and maintenance reporting.

A lighting control system network and method of providing same including a remote control unit having a RF signal transmitter and a RF receiver and a number of lighting control units, each of the lighting control units having a RF signal transmitter, a RF receiver, and a lighting unit associated therewith. The remote control unit and the lighting control units are configured in a master-slave oriented network. One of the lighting control units is configured as a master in the network and the remaining lighting control units and the remote control unit are configured as slaves in the network. The lighting control units and the remote control units communicate bi-directionally with each other over RF wireless links. The network may include sensors for detecting an environmental or system parameter. Multiple instances of the lighting control network may be interfaced together to form a building-wide network.

An embodiment of the exemplary SoftRouter architecture includes two physically separate networks, a control plane network and a data plane network. The data plane network is one physical network for the data traffic, while the control plane network is another physical network for the control traffic. The topology of the data plane network is made up of interconnected forwarding elements (FEs). The topology of the control plane network is made up interconnected control elements (CEs). This physical independence of the control plane network from the data plane network provides for a secure mechanism to communicate among the CEs in the control plane network. In addition, this physical independence provides improved reliability and improved scalability, when compared to the traditional router architecture, where control plane message are in-band with the data plane.

An apparatus, system, and method for managing dynamic network access control. The invention provides services and controlled network access that includes quarantining nodes so that they may be identified, audited, and provided an opportunity to be brought into compliance with a security policy. The invention is configured to detect a device seeking to join the network, and determine if the device is allowed to join the network. If the invention determines that the device is not to be allowed, the device may be quarantined using a VLAN. The suspect device may then be audited for vulnerabilities. If vulnerabilities are identified, remediation may be employed to guide the suspect device, a user, and / or administrator of the suspect device towards a resolution of the vulnerabilities, such that the device may be reconfigured for acceptance onto the network.

A method and apparatus is disclosed for assessing performance of control applications in an environmental control network and for diagnosing performance problems. The apparatus includes a performance assessment and diagnostic display comprising a facility navigation tree, a system navigation tree and a performance / diagnostics window. The facility navigation tree and system navigation tree may be used to select the facilities and systems that are to have their associated control applications assessed and / or diagnosed. The performance / diagnostics window includes graphs of performance indictors that are indicative of performance levels for the included control applications. The system tree may be used to delve to more detailed views of the performance indicators to obtain additional information that may help to diagnose problems noted in performance of the selected control applications.

An interface point network (IPN) and a method for communication with a laboratory information system using an IPN, wherein the IPN includes at least one host computer in communication with at least one laboratory instrument, the laboratory information system and an interface point server in communication with the host computer and the laboratory information system, the interface point server being configured to function as a communication interface between the host computer and the laboratory information system in a manner responsive to a predetermined communication protocol. Use of bar code and RFID labels for tracking samples and in maintaining sample data is described.

An automated meter reading network system to collect utility usage data from multiple utility meters having utility meter sensors is provided. The system includes multiple meter data collectors each in communication with one or more utility meters to collect utility usage data and forming a wireless mesh communications network characterized by having a varying frequency mode of operation. The system also includes a host computer in communication with the meter data collectors either directly or through multiple field host data collectors, which can be connected to the host computer through a wide area network. The system also includes a meter data collector program product at least partially stored in the memory of the host computer adapted to manage the mesh communication network that is adapted to vary the frequency mode of at least portions of the mesh communication network between a fixed frequency mode and a frequency hopping spread spectrum mode to enhance network performance.

A networkable power controller includes a mode selector for selectively conducting of a plurality of input signals to an output of the networkable power controller, where the input signals and the output signals satisfy the same signaling protocol. The networkable power controller may be networked with other networkable power controllers, lighting ballasts and other building automation control devices, and user-controlled voltage selectors to provide a lighting control network. A power controller may include a mode selector that may be used in combination with other control devices or components, including a rotary dimmer control, a digital slide dimmer control, a demand load shedder component, a photometer component, and a communications interface. The communications interface allows digital control of the networkable power controller.

A network management system is provided that allows a user to configure multiple devices according to a consistent set of policies. The system includes a device learning module that can read configuration data from a network device and automatically match that configuration data to existing policies and components of policies within the system. The device learning module also identifies unknown configuration data, which does not match any existing policy. The system further includes a grammar builder that can parse the unknown configuration data and construct a component or policy from the unknown data, by matching the unknown data to a grammar of configuration commands for the network device. The system also provided auditing capabilities, where policies are compared to running network configurations, and differences are identified.

A method and an apparatus for controlling network access of a User Equipment (UE) based on the network's load and time tolerance (delay tolerance) are provided. A network access method for a terminal in a wireless communication system includes sending an access request message containing a time-tolerant indicator at a predefined time, determining, when a reject message is received, a cause value and a hold time contained in the reject message, and re-sending the access request message after the hold time elapses.

A spectrum manager and base station controller for a wireless radio access network allocates TV band white space to all TV band devices under its control using: an allocation policy; information pulled / pushed from a white space database, spectrum usage data supplied by a spectrum sensing engine, and information received from at least one other peer spectrum manager and base station controller for the wireless radio access network.

A system and method to monitor, detect, analyze and respond to, triggering conditions associated with packet and signal flows in a network system including attached functions and a network infrastructure. The system includes a detection function, an analysis function, and a response function. The detection function includes a monitoring sub-function, a flow definition sub-function, and a monitor counter sub-function. The flow definition sub-function defines the types of activities associated with the traffic flow that may indicate a triggering condition requiring analysis and potentially a response. The monitor sub-function observes traffic flows. The monitor counter sub-function counts the defined types of activities occurring in the device. The analysis function analyzes the event from the monitored flows, flow counters, status and other network information and determines whether a response is required. The response function initiates a response to a perceived event or attack based on the events detected in the flow metrics and other data. The response function further includes a sub-function for activating changes throughout the network system based on receiving and sending event notifications. Responses generated by the response function include dynamic policy changes.

Methods and systems are disclosed for managing a plurality of power resource assets from a central control center, operating the plurality of power resource assets in an automated fashion as a single power plant.

The invention proposes a method and a unit for controlling the flow of at least one TCP connection between a sender and a receiver. The method is of the type which consists in controlling, at the level of a given multiplexing node through which TCP segments relevant to the connection pass, a window size parameter contained in acknowledgement segments sent back by the receiver. The method comprises the steps of:a) receiving an acknowledgement from the receiver on the up link (receiver to sender) of the connection at the level of said given multiplexing node;b) controlling a window size parameter contained in, said acknowledgement segment on the basis of the difference between, firstly, a first context value associated with the TCP connection, defined as being the sequence number of the last segment that was transmitted from said given multiplexing node on the down link (sender to receiver) of the connection, to which the length of said segment is added, and, secondly, the sequence number indicated in said acknowledgement segment;c) transmitting the acknowledgement segment to the sender the up link of the connection from said multiplexing node with the window size parameter thus controlled.

The present invention provides a master-slave architecture for a radio frequency RF networked lighting control system having all slave elements (ballasts) configured as backups for a network master control unit. In the system and method of the present invention a slave element can become the network master network unit without reconfiguring the network and without any human intervention. Similarly, both a master and one or more slave elements may recover from a temporary outage without necessitating reconfiguration of the network and without any human intervention.

A method and apparatus for device discovery and multi-mode security in a wired and / or wireless control network are described. A controlled device is configured with discovery-level instructions and application-level control instructions. The controlled device includes a user-configurable parameter for selecting between multiple security modes. In one or more security modes, the controlled device may ignore application-level messages until encrypted communications are established with a controller. In one mode, the encrypted communication is established with an encryption key exchange using a predetermined security key. In another mode, a specific key is manually entered into the controller by the user / administrator to facilitate the encryption key exchange. Additionally, for control applications where security is not important, an unencrypted security mode may be implemented. A driver ID provided by the controlled device facilitates loading of a preferred device driver by the controller.

An industrial control network security protection monitoring system performs real-time prevention and protection on industrial equipment of the industrial control network, and realizes network security protection monitoring through an acquisition layer, an analysis layer, a function layer and a display layer based on an integrated application platform, wherein the display layer mainly displays security trend, system topology and industrial control panorama; the acquisition layer comprises the acquisition of network data traffic and the recording of industrial control network operations; the analysis layer mainly comprises data processing, data association, data aggregation, data modeling, and integrated interfaces of other function modules; and the function layer mainly comprises monitoring audit, intrusion prevention, vulnerability mining, and data isolation. The system provided by the invention protects and protects industrial equipment in real time through the intelligent protectiontechnology of the industrial network control system, monitors and audits the data information of the entire industrial control network through the monitoring and auditing technology to prevent the industrial control network from being attacked externally, and can also have the vulnerability mining function of the industrial control network to escort the entire industrial control network security.

Various embodiments are disclosed for a services policy communication system and method. In some embodiments, a software developers kit is provided for implementing a verifiable service processor to be stored on a communications device, in which the software developer kit facilitates development of a plurality of service processors for controlling network service usage of a plurality of communications devices and includes one or more tested service processor versions for more or more communications device types.

The invention discloses a distributed network control method. A plurality of controller nodes form a distributed controller network, and each controller node manages one or more pieces of switch equipment. The method comprises the following steps that: the controller node receives information reported by a switch, synchronizes network topology change information in the information among all the controller nodes, and stores host position information in the information into a distributed control network; and when receiving a data stream processing request, the controller node queries the destination address information of a data stream from the distributed controller network, and establishes a data exchange path for the data stream according to locally stored global network topology information. The invention also provides a distributed network control device. According to the technical scheme, the problem of performance bottleneck of a network controller can be solved.

A system, method and computer program product that is designed to support high-availability, rapid fault recovery, out of band condition signaling and / or other quality of service assurances and security in a networked environment. In one aspect, a method of the invention includes the step of providing a processing system with a dual-kernel or multi-kernel software operating system. The operating system includes a supervisory operating system and a secondary operating system that provides network functions to user applications. The method also includes the step of providing a Network Control Software (NCS) in the supervisory operating system. The NCS is configured to transparently monitor and control network operations in the secondary operating system.

Embodiments of the invention provide a system that predicts network events and triggers a pre-emptive response. An example implementation predicts network link failures and creates a change in the network before the failure actually happens by instigating policy-based adjustment of routing parameters. In particular, an embodiment of the invention operates in two phases. In the first phase the historical operation of a network is observed (B.4.2), to determine observed relationships between link or cluster failures that have occurred, and subsequent failures of different links or clusters. From these observed relationships failure rules can be derived (B.4.4) that are then applied to control routing in the network during a second, control, phase. That is, in the second, control, phase, the derived failure rules are applied such that if a link or cluster failure occurs, then from the rules a prior knowledge of what additional links may fail in the next a time period is obtained, and remedial action can then be taken such as routing data traffic away from the links that are predicted to fail (B.4.6).

Techniques for controlling a network connection in accordance with connection information associated with a destination location on a network are disclosed. Controlling of the network connection in accordance with connection information associated with the destination location can be achieved in a variety of ways. One way is in the selection of a network transport (e.g., bearer selection). Another way is in the configuration of parameters associated with the connection (i.e., connection parameters). In either case, the connection information includes information with which the selection of the network transport and / or connection parameters can be made. The controlling of the network connection impacts quality of service provided to a requestor that is requesting use of the connection.

The present invention describes a method, network node and a system for controlling network resources for non real-time data connections in a mobile communication network. Further, the present describes an adaptive inactivity timer, which takes into account the history of the current traffic flow and the nature of the NRT traffic. Traffic must be measured in the mobile communication network for each NRT traffic flow to which the adaptive inactivity timer is used. Specially, the adaptive inactivity timer for the NRT bearers in the WCDMA networks (UTRAN, IP RAN) is concerned. The different NRT traffic protocols, e.g. the TCP, have known transport patterns. The releasing of different resources in mobile communication network can be made dependent of the traffic and on the phase of the transmission. For example, some TCP / IP traffic has different transmission pattern than the WTP has, and further the TCP / IP has different traffic patters in the beginning of the transmission and after a while.

An interface point network (IPN) and a method for communication with a laboratory information system using an IPN, wherein the IPN includes at least one host computer in communication with at least one laboratory instrument, the laboratory information system and an interface point server in communication with the host computer and the laboratory information system, the interface point server being configured to function as a communication interface between the host computer and the laboratory information system in a manner responsive to a predetermined communication protocol.

Stand-alone modules or blocks for use in creating low-power sensor-based monitor / control systems. Each module performs a pre-defined function, and when included in a monitor / control network operates as a node on the network and automatically communicates with one or more connected nodes using a uni-directional packet-based protocol. One class of such predefined nodes communicates Boolean values, for example, with input sensor nodes detecting the presence or absence of environmental phenomena (e.g., motion, light, sound, water, button presses, etc.), intermediate nodes transforming those Boolean values using combinational or sequential logic, and output nodes converting the resulting Boolean values to environmental phenomena (e.g., beeping, light, electric relay activation, etc.) or to data for further processing by a computer. Another class of nodes communicates integer or number values.