A new transmission method of response data to interactive TV programs provided over cable television networks

When viewers participate in quizzes or auctions on interactive television programs offered by digital broadcasting, many responses are generated in a short time causing congestion in the network. Today, telephone calls provide the responses. However, to achieve faster service, response transmission methods using wider band networks must be studied. In this paper, we propose a system for collecting the responses of the CATV subscribers over a CATV uplink and its implementation. First, a session layer having the retransmit control function is provided to guarantee end-to-end communication between the subscribers and the broadcast station. Therefore, a simple protocol using the UDP could be implemented. Next, the CATV station is positioned as the relay station of the responses, and a relay server having a queue in the session layer is deployed. Thus, the network load is reduced by storing the responses temporarily in the queue and continuously transmitting. Furthermore, the network load reduction effect of the proposed method was confirmed through experiments using virtual networks. (c) 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.