Digital subscriber line access network with improved authentication, authorization, accounting and configuration control for multicast services

摘要

A Digital Subscriber Line [DSL] access network consisting of a home network (HN) at a user premises, an access network (AN) comprising a Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer [DSLAM], an aggregation network (GN) consisting of aggregation switches (AS), and a content network (CN). The content network comprises a Broadband Remote Access Server [BRAS] and local servers (LS) providing connectivity to the Internet for a user (S) in the home network, a Remote Authentication Dial-In User Server [RADIUS] connected to the BRAS for authentication, authorization and accounting of the user, and a digital broadcast network (DN) adapted to broadcast audio and video content to the user. The aggregation network is adapted to couple the BRAS and the digital broadcast network to the DSLAM of the access network. The access network is adapted to couple the DSLAM to a Set Top Box [STB] of the home network. The DSLAM is further coupled to the RADIUS server for authentication, authorization and accounting of multicast services to the user (S) that is a multicast subscriber. The RADIUS AAA server is thus involved in the authentication, authorization and accounting for both high speed Internet access as well as for broadcast services. Multicast information is exchanged between the DSLAM and the RADIUS server by means of RADIUS attributes for multicast. Two new type of attributes are defined: RADIUS authentication attributes for multicast and RADIUS accounting attributes for multicast.