Multiplex communications – Network configuration determination
Reexamination Certificate
1998-03-19
2003-08-26
Holloway, III, Edwin C. (Department: 2635)
Multiplex communications
Network configuration determination
C370S270000, C370S444000, C706S010000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06611501
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to process management systems. It finds particular application in the provision of services over a communications network, with particular reference to feature interaction.
There are many processes which are complex and which can be carried out in more than one way. Embodiments of the present invention are intended to select and configure the steps in a process.
An example of a complex process, which can be controlled by a management system according to an embodiment of the present invention, is that of service provision over one or more communications networks. Recently, the services available to users over communications networks have grown much more sophisticated. For instance, in the UK, it is now possible to subscribe to call waiting and answering services, provided over the public switched telecommunications network (PSTN). It is expected that modernisation of existing networks, and the provision of new networks, will lead to a proliferation of new services.
Increasingly in the future, different types of services are likely to be offered over communications networks. For instance the increasing capability of technology is enabling a future where a wide variety of multimedia services can be delivered to users over communications networks. These services could include simple voice telephony, multimedia conference amongst many users, home shopping and video on demand. Additionally users may want such services to be delivered over a variety of terminal types such as a portable phone, portable personal computer and domestic television set with a set-top-box.
These services come not only from development of the telecommunications environment, including telephony and cable television, but also from environments previously separate, such as the computing environment. For instance, there has been major growth of computer network services, such as those available on the Internet. Collectively all these services are referred to herein as information services.
Although to date (at least in the telephony world) the communication network operator and the service provider (SP) have generally coincided, this is not essential. Another trend expected in the future is that, increasingly, the service provider will be separate from the network operator. As in the case of Internet, several SPs (vendors) may offer their services (products) over a common network. Indeed, there may be further complexity involved in that the “common network” might in fact comprise multiple networks connected together, managed by many different network providers.
Communications services are based on functionality provided by the network(s) carrying the services. In the telecommunications arena, recent developments mean that this could be provided increasingly by intelligence, ie decision-making software, in an intelligent network architecture. With the convergence of computing and telecommunications technology, however, functionality may in practice be provided in other ways.
Regardless of how functionality will be provided, there has emerged a problem of “feature interaction”. This arises for instance when features which would normally be triggered in provision of one service, conflict with features normally triggered in provision of another service and the two services are called on at the same time. A simple example of feature interaction is the conflict between “Call Forwarding” and “Call Waiting”. Clearly a call cannot be both forwarded and kept waiting.
As services grow more diverse, feature interaction has been found to be a very complex problem. It is considered one of the fundamental obstacles to rapid development and deployment of new services. As the number of new features grows, the time required to introduce them grows.
In attempting to solve the feature interaction problem, a strategy has been to classify the solutions into avoidance, detection and resolution. Avoidance looks at ways to prevent undesired feature interactions. Detection assumes that feature interactions will be present, and determines methods for identifying and locating them. Resolution assumes that feature interactions will be present and detected, and looks at mechanisms for minimising their potential adverse effects. It is not practical to assume that the solution can be provided by just one approach. Feature interactions found before deployment can be avoided. In contrast, feature interactions detected during run-time must be resolved at run-time. One advantage of run-time interaction resolution is that the problem space is reduced, since only information specific to each occurrence of an interaction need be considered.
Current approaches to run-time resolution include event based resolution and negotiating software agents. Event based resolution is based on an approach of collecting events during the basic call process which trigger the activation of features. In this way, the feature manager can control which features should be invoked. These approaches can resolve issues such as signal ambiguities and incompatible combinations of call-processing activities. An alternative approach is to use negotiating software agents proposed by Griffeths and Velthuijsen in “The Negotiating Agents Approach to Runtime Feature Interaction Resolution”, published in 1994 by IOS Press. This approach uses agents to represent users, network providers, and terminals, collectively called entities. Users define policies which describe how each feature should behave. These policies constrain the set of operations that each user or provider is willing to perform in initiating or modifying a call. A negotiation mechanism is used to resolve conflicts between the policies of different users, thus maintaining autonomy amongst the users.
International patent application WO-A-94/27411 describes a method of resolving conflicts among entities in a distributed system wherein a negotiating software agent represents each entity, the method being based upon generation of proposals and counter-proposals on the nature of a communication session to be established between those entities, selected by the agents from a goal hierarchy. A single goal hierarchy is used by all the agents involved in establishing the session although different agents may mark a particular node within the hierarchy acceptable or unacceptable. On receiving an unacceptable proposal an agent may derive, from the goal hierarchy, the overriding goal of the user initiating the proposal and hence select a counter-proposal from within the same hierarchy.
In this description the term “agent” relates to a function or process which operates in a computing environment and which can act autonomously to receive a request for an operation and provide a result. An agent normally has an up-datable data store for holding data relevant to local conditions, and usually also for holding some global information about the disturbed environment in which it sits. Agents operate autonomously, having decision-making functionality (intelligence) allowing them to negotiate and output a result in response to an incoming message. The result may be for instance a control signal to an apparatus. In the communications environment, the control signal may cause a connection to be made according to a particular configuration.
Typically, an agent is embodied as a piece of software, for example written in the C programming language, running on a suitable computing platform, for example a UNIX (Trademark) based platform. Requests and results are passed between an agent and a requesting entity, which might be another agent, across a suitable communications network, for example a TCP/IP-based local area network, to which the computing platform is interfaced. In some embodiments, plural agents can reside on a common computing platform and, conversely, a single agent can be realised across plural computing platforms in the environment. Also, the computing environment might be heterogeneous, and support various different types of computing platforms.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accor
Corley Stephen Leslie
Owen Martin John
Patel Satya
Strulo Ben
British Telecommunications public limited company
Holloway III Edwin C.
Nixon & Vanderhye PC
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