I was recently reading a few IPv6 patent, and happened upon on developed by
Wesley E. George, Time Warner Cable Inc. on the topic of Use of dns
information as trigger for dynamic ipv4 address allocation.
It seems to impact the allocation of the IPv4 & IPv6 address for the
gateway router, software defined consumer CPE, UPNP, CGN, content-based
network, residential broadband networks; DSL networks; fiber-to-the-home
(FTTH), fiber-to-the-node (FTTN), or fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC) networks;
wireless Internet service providers (WISP)(fixed wireless to replace home
broadband, typically in rural areas); or indeed to any situation with an
on-demand IPv4 connection and dynamically assigned addressing.
Am I reading this wrong? Has Time Warner patented all functions on the CPE?
No 99% of the text is noise. Read the claims and notice the limitations:
the patent is about a CPE with IPv6 without IPv4 that somehow acquires IPv4
as soon something does a DNS lookup that results in a reply without AAAA.
It is a stupid idea if you ask me, so the patent is worthless.
..and thus, based on most of the current technology patents out there, perfectly patentable.
dont worry, the rest of the internet will probably need something like this in the future...
and whats happened here is some coffee-room tech chat or water cooler propeller-head conversation
got captured and written-up by some over-zealous manager/techie combo to ensure that the
world cant do something obvious later when needed (its probably not obvious to most
people righ tnow as we havent even bothered looking at it...but if we did then it would
probably be an obvious method and first one out of the wash).
when it means is that most of those ISPs that do a captive portal answer for failed
DNS responses are going to be violating this patent if the query was for IPv6 and
didnt get an answer.....
This is not a patent. It is a patent application. Most applications
do not turn into patents, or at least not with all of the claims
included.
If you look at the claims, which are what matter, this is for a rather
specific hack in a broadband router which assigns a v4 address on the
fly when a DNS lookup from behind the router returns a result that
suggests that v4 traffic will happen, presumably by returning an A
record.
I can't imagine how anyone would misread this as a patent on IPv6.
Too bad it won't actually work. I type Slashdot.org in my browser. The web
browser does DNS lookup. The CPE notices there is only an A record
available and boots the IPv4 stack. However there is no way to push an IPv4
configuration to my computer. DHCP is pull not push. Even if there was, the
web browser would not be prepared for an IPv4 configuration to suddenly
appear in the middle of a request.
I notice the patent application does not actually specify how this is
supposed to work. It should not be possible to patent without building a
prototype and indeed without even knowing how to build one. Then if someone
later figures out the details, you somehow owe your soul to these guys that
just did some handwaving.
The point is you'd already have a 192 address or something, and it
would only grab the external address for a short duration for use as
an external PAT address, thus oversubscribing the ip4 pool to users
who need it (based on dns). Its still pretty broken, but less broken
than you describe.
That may well be the subject of one of the other patents. Also, there is no requirement under US patent law to build a prototype. It just has to be possible for one "usually skilled in the art" to construct one from the content of the patent. Also, most patents are not for a complete system. They just describe the function of a single invention, possibly useful in a larger system. For example, consider the patent of a gravity escapement in a clock (No. 739,245. Pat. Sept 15, 1903. W. Willmann). The escapement is useless on its own, but has application in many mechanical clocks, including watches.
So there's no requirement that the patent explain how IPv4 addresses are acquired by the client.
The CPE does the private IP space it traditionally does for the end user equipment. If a v4 address is needed, it is pushed from the provider to the CPE, where it does NAT. It doesn't need your Windows, Linux, Android box to support anything atypical.
Nah what you describe is a different invention. Someone probably already
has a patent on that.
The browser will do a DNS lookup on slashdot.org and then cache that -
forever (or until you restart the browser). Yes it will ignore the TTL
(apps don't get the TTL at all, so apps don't know). Same happens if you
ssh to yourserver.someplace.com. One DNS lookup, the traffic sticks there
forever or until the session is terminated. DNS is horrible for this.
If they had a IPv4 internal private network going you would not need to
hook unto the DNS at all. Just get IP address when something wants to be
routed out the WAN port. Also the NAT table is a good indicator of when you
can release the address again.
On other words, that would work, but the system described in the patent app
wont.
Of course both systems are useless. I can not imagine any end user that
wont have a ton of IPv4 going on for the next decade to come. And when time
comes, we are more likely to NAT64 than this.
