Telephonic communications – Special services – Service profile
Reexamination Certificate
1999-08-31
2003-09-16
Matar, Ahmad F. (Department: 2642)
Telephonic communications
Special services
Service profile
C379S010030, C370S469000, C370S465000, C370S535000, C455S410000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06621895
ABSTRACT:
CROSS REFERENCE TO OTHER APPLICATIONS
This is the first application filed in respect of the present invention.
MICRO-FICHE APPENDIX
Not applicable.
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to communication networks and, in particular, to Enhanced Communication Services (ECS) operative within a communication network and designed to meet the requirements of modern users and to an ECS enabled network incorporating such enhanced communication services.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Communication networks have historically been constructed using models and protocols as guides. Networking models and protocols have proliferated over the past few years as new networks have been introduced or existing networks have evolved to accommodate new end-user, device and application requirements. The proliferation of networking models has been manifested in monolithic, highly integrated network and network component architectures. Functionality and products developed for a target group of end-users, devices or applications are almost invariably not readily extendible to another network without extensive modification or complete re-creation. New networks cannot capitalize on functionality and protocols developed for previous networks because monolithic integrated designs do not permit porting. Current networks provide limited choice of services and the choices available are often difficult to access. Adding new functionality to installed networks requires complex modifications of the previously existing functionality. The time required to implement these modifications is incompatible with the modern competitive communication business environment where the speed to market greatly influences total revenues earned. As a result, the present network space consists of a collection of heterogenous modern and legacy networks, each operating under respective different models and protocols (e.g. TDMA, frame relay, ATM, TCP/IP etc.); utilising different transport media (e.g. copper, fibre, satellite etc.), and frequently owned by different business entities. Federated networks are edge-connected by means of gateway servers, permitting transport of communication data between the networks. However, where federated networks are dissimilar, adaptation services are required to facilitate the transport of data across the networks. Thus a modern user of communication services must be conscious of the network technology to which they have access, and must assess its suitability for any desired communication session. Additionally, the user must consciously interact with the network, in a manner dictated by the network model, in order to achieve their communication goals.
In the context of the present invention, adjoining communication networks are considered to be “dissimilar” or “heterogeneous” if their respective models, protocols and/or transport media are sufficiently different that communication data originating in one network cannot be transported by an adjoining network without conversion of the data. Such conversion of data, referred to herein as “adaptation”, is an automated process (which may or may not be user selected) to facilitate transport of data across the heterogeneous networks. For example, a site network operating under the TCP/IP protocol may be edge-connected with a collector network operating under the ATM protocol. Data originating in the site network must be adapted (e.g. in a gateway server intermediate the two networks) to conform to the ATM protocol before it can be transported by the collector network.
Modern voice communication networks have evolved in the twentieth century with a focus on creating universal telephone services. Currently, a revolution in telecommunications is underway that holds the promise of providing ubiquitous service for multimedia applications. The development and evolution of these multimedia applications are largely driven by market forces (the demands of end users) and offered by vendors who are usually unrelated to the owners of the transport media used for the multimedia communication sessions. Multimedia communication sessions are typically mediated by edge service providers (e.g. Internet Service Providers—ISP's), who are frequently unaffiliated with owners of network transport media, and who may offer complex edge services to augment the power of content applications being used by their customers.
In order to achieve a goal of ubiquitous multimedia communication, modern networks are in need of an enabling interoperability infrastructure, just as in the past computers were in the need of a data network. It is widely recognized that networking solutions need to take into account increasingly powerful edge services and content applications that are currently available or are under development.
Others have addressed this need by contributing to the design of network architectures aimed at providing ubiquitous access to multimedia services. For example, the Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture Consortium (TINA-C) have produced a document entitled
Service Architecture Version
: 5.0 dated Jun. 16, 1997. The TINA-C architecture stems from a guiding principle arising from market, industry and sociological trend analysis. The key trends analyzed in devising the architecture include: layering the network architecture to move application and service logic out of transport nodes and specific telecommunications technologies to higher level entities; providing telecommunications in a multi-player, multi-provider environment; and, user choice of telecommunication services. The TINA-C architecture is a three macro-layer view of the network that assumes a middleware distributed processing domain, and utilises Open Distributed Processing (ODP) similar to that defined by the Object Management Group (OMG). The TINA-C architecture advocates technology independent views of transport elements and connections by representing both abstractly. It also includes the concept of a services broker used to match communication services in the middle layer and transport layers with user specifications. Communication can be effected across federated, heterogeneous networks and adaptation occurs at network edges as a part of a Resource Partition Layer.
Another network architecture has been proposed by the MultiMedia Communications Forum, Inc. (MMCF) in a paper entitled
Reference Architecture Model Specifications
dated 1995. The purpose of the document is to provide a framework for the structure of the integrated services required by distributed multimedia applications. The focus is on the aspects of the architectural model that support multimedia communication applications such as multimedia conferencing and multimedia information service. The underlying technology is not of primary focus. The MMCF architectural framework consists of logical domains which offer a set of services and their respective functions. The partitioning addresses the complex problem of communicating between distributed application processes. Each domain is accessed by functions in other domains through an open interface referred to as an Application Program Interface (API). The open interface shields each domain from the specific characteristics of the functions and services provided by other domains. Thus, the specification of domains may evolve with changing technology without directly impacting other domain specifications. Within this model resides a manager entity, associated with the application, middleware, media device and transport domains to manage information flow sent/received from the network and delivered to the end-user.
The MMCF reference architecture model consists of a user presentation layer, an application domain layer, a middleware domain layer, and a lower layer which is divided into a media device domain sector and a transport domain sector. APIs are provided between each of the four layers to enable inter-layer communication. Communications are handled in a trickle-down, trickle-up format in which direct communication appears to be enabled only between adjacent laye
Daniels Kent
Knowlin Thjuan P
Matar Ahmad F.
Nortel Networks Limited
Renault Ogilvy
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