Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Accounting
Reexamination Certificate
1999-09-10
2001-03-27
Cosimano, Edward R. (Department: 2161)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Accounting
C705S030000, C705S400000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06208977
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates generally to network control and management and, more particularly, to billing network usage.
Presently, wide area networks (WAN's) have achieved an enormous popularity. The popularity of WAN's is, at least, partially due to their ability interconnect operations globally and to perform a variety of functions rapidly and economically. The functions performed by WAN's include data transport; for example, text, audio, and video data; message transport; conferencing; and searches of data bases. Each of these functions can require the transport of large amounts of data across the network. The transport of large amounts of data can use significant WAN bandwidth.
Users also employ WAN's for the distribution of data to groups of other users. One type of distribution is advertising where a large group of users will receive the distributed data. A second type of distribution is network conferencing, for example, video conferencing, which targets a well-defined and smaller group. A third type of distribution is electronic mail directed to a group of recipients, for example, the employees of a company. Distributions may require transmission of large amounts of data either because they target large groups or because they use data-intensive applications, such as, video or multimedia applications. The popularity of WAN's for the distribution of large data files has caused serious problems with maintaining sufficient WAN bandwidth particularly due to the proliferation of the Internet and ecommerce applications.
The convenience and usefulness of WAN's has produced an uncontrolled increase in bandwidth usage by individual users. This increase has substantially increased the cost of WAN's to businesses relying on them. The uncontrolled increase in bandwidth usage has given businesses two choices. Either accept anything and everything done by employee-users including the need to pay more and more for WAN services or restrict many WAN services from employ-users to control costs. Presently, businesses are unable to control bandwidth usage by employee-users without strongly limiting access to many convenient WAN features.
The increases in bandwidth usage have also resulted from undisciplined methods in the development of new applications that use WAN's.
The present invention is directed to overcoming, or, at least, reducing the effects of one or more of the problems set forth above.
SUMMARY
In a first aspect, the invention provides a method of billing users according to their use of a network. The network has a plurality of links interconnecting a plurality of node locations. The method includes determining a usage price per unit bandwidth for a virtual path between first and second node locations, collecting traffic data for an amount of data transported between the first and second node locations. The usage price is proportional to a sum of usage prices of links of a set of paths between the first and second node locations. The method also includes calculating a total price equal to the amount of data transported times the usage price per unit bandwidth.
In a second aspect, the invention provides a method of billing users according to their usage of a network. The network has a plurality of links interconnecting at least two node locations. The method includes determining a usage price per unit bandwidth for transmitting data between first and second node locations, collecting traffic data for the amount of data transported from the first node location to the second node location, and calculating a total price for the data transported. The total price is the usage price per unit bandwidth times the amount of data transported. The method also includes apportioning the total price between the first and second node locations according to either a price responsibility matrix or a rate plan.
In a third aspect, the invention also provides for a program storage device encoding an executable program. The program encodes instructions to perform one of the above-described methods of billing users according to their use of a network.
In a fourth aspect, the invention provides a system for billing users according to their use of a network. The network has a plurality of links interconnecting a plurality of nodes. At least two of the nodes have node locations. The system includes a plurality of collection units and a subsystem coupled to receive the data accumulated by the collection units. Each collection unit is coupled to a separate link of the network to accumulate traffic data on data transported over the coupled link and between pairs of nodes. The subsystem is adapted to determine a total price for data transported from a first to a second node location. The total price is the amount of data transported from first to the second node location times a usage price per unit bandwidth for a virtual path between the first and second node locations.
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“Method of Providing Rate Information for Multiple Networks”: IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin; Nov. 1, 1994, vol. 37, No. 11, pp. 551-552.*
Kay: For many on-line database users, time is money. (Focus on On-Line Databases); PC Week, Mar. 29, 1988, v5, n13, pp. 120-122.*
“The Meter is Running—As network costs add up, managers wonder who should foot the bandwidth bill”; Communications Week, Sep. 23, 1996, p. 50.
Hernandez Milton B.
Kusnetsov Dmitry
Tapia Pablo E.
Apogee Networks, Inc.
Cosimano Edward R.
Fish & Richardson P.C.
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