A method for execution by a dispersed storage and task (DST) execution unit operates to receive a slice retrieval request from a requester that includes a slice name of one or slices to be retrieved; determine an access policy to apply to the slice retrieval request; determine a timestamp; and determine, based on the timestamp, when the one or more slices are available for retrieval. When the one or more slices are available for retrieval, the method operates further to determine when the one or more slices are currently available to the requester; retrieves the one or more slices from memory and sends the one or more slices to the requester, when the one or more slices are currently available to the requester.

The present invention relates to the field of communications. Disclosed are an MBMS error processing method, a communications node, and a communications system, which are designed for solving the problem in the prior art that data cannot be transmitted in time when an MBMS error occurs. The method comprises: receiving indication information of an MBMS error; establishing a unicast bearer according to the indication information; and sending data through the unicast bearer, the data being data that a user equipment is receiving through an MBMS bearer or data that the user equipment is interested in to receive when the MBMS error occurs. Also disclosed is a computer storage medium.

A method for facilitating communications between client devices in geographically separated networks is described. First, message monitoring is conducted by each of a plurality of virtual appliances within a local network to detect a message of a first message type. Responsive to failing to locate a Media Access Control (MAC) address of a destination for the message within a prescribed table by a default gateway, one of the plurality of virtual appliances is selected for handling a forwarding of the message to a plurality of remote networks, and the message via the selected virtual appliance is forwarded to a plurality of gateways associated with a plurality of remote networks. Responsive to locating the MAC address of the destination within the table, the virtual appliance previously handling communications with the destination to forward the message to the destination.

A method for execution by a processing system of a storage network includes: generating encoded data slices based on a dispersed error encoding of at least one data object; receiving an access policy associated with the at least one data object; determining a timestamp corresponding to a current time; and storing the encoded data slices, an indicator of the time stamp and an indicator of the access policy in a storage unit of the storage network.

In general, techniques are described for maintaining coherency in distributed operating systems for network devices. A network device comprising hardware computing nodes may be configured to perform the techniques. The hardware computing nodes may execute a distributed operating system. At least one the hardware computing nodes may determine whether one or more of the plurality of hardware computing nodes has failed and is no longer supporting execution of the distributed operating system, and determine whether remaining ones of the plurality of hardware computing nodes exceeds a quorum threshold. The at least one of the hardware computing nodes may further restart, when the remaining ones of the plurality of hardware computing nodes is less than the quorum threshold, the distributed operating system.

Data traffic routing and/or transmission parameter adaption decisions are made at a sending node by considering error patterns of one or more possible receiving nodes at the bit level. Data traffic routing and/or transmission parameter adaption decisions may be used to preemptively prevent data errors from occurring as data traffic is transmit by a sending node. The error pattern information may include information on numbers of bit errors in a code word or information on relative randomness or burstiness of bit error patterns at the one or more possible receiving nodes. The collaboratively shared error pattern information may be determined and updated over time intervals or upon selected conditions occurring. In one embodiment, a next hop node may be determined using bit error patterns of neighbor nodes. In another embodiment, transmission parameter adaption or channel selection may be determined using bit error patterns.

A method for execution in a dispersed storage network operates to determine one or more slice names of one or more slices to consider for deletion; determine an access policy corresponding to the one or more slices; determine a current timestamp; and determine when there is no future slice availability for the one or more slices, based on the current timestamp and the access policy. When there is no future slice availability for the one or more slices, the dispersed storage network determines when reconsideration is available and sends a reconsideration message to a reconsideration entity when the reconsideration is determined to be available. The dispersed storage network deletes the one or more slices when the reconsideration is determined to be unavailable.

A system for facilitating communications between client devices in geographically separated networks is described. First, message monitoring is conducted by each of a plurality of virtual appliances within a local network to detect a message of a first message type. Responsive to failing to locate a Media Access Control (MAC) address of a destination for the message within a prescribed table by a default gateway, one of the plurality of virtual appliances is selected for handling a forwarding of the message to a plurality of remote networks, and the message via the selected virtual appliance is forwarded to a plurality of gateways associated with a plurality of remote networks. Responsive to locating the MAC address of the destination within the table, the virtual appliance previously handling communications with the destination to forward the message to the destination.

A storage unit of the storage network operates by: receiving an access request from a user device of a first group of user devices, the storage unit having an access policy that designates, for the first group of user devices, a first read time window for reading data from the storage unit and a first write time window for writing data to the storage unit; determining whether the access request is received within the first read time window when the access request is a read request or whether the access request is received within the first write time window when the access request is a write request; when the access request is the read request and is received within the first read time window, generating a read response that includes one or more requested encoded data slices; and when the access request is the write request and is received within the first write time window, processing the write request to store one or more new encoded data slices.

A system includes a stream controller. The stream controller may be configured to (i) determine when one of a plurality of input streams becomes invalid, (ii) switch generation of an output stream associated with the invalid input stream from the invalid input stream to a valid one of the plurality of input streams, and (iii) when the invalid input stream becomes valid again, switch the generation of the output stream back to the now valid input stream.