Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer-to-computer session/connection establishing
Reexamination Certificate
1998-09-24
2002-04-23
Wiley, David (Department: 2155)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Computer-to-computer session/connection establishing
C709S223000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06377993
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to information delivery systems and, particularly, to a novel, World Wide Web/Internet-based, telecommunications network data management reporting and presentation service for customers of telecommunications service entities.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Telecommunications service entities, e.g., MCI, AT&T, Sprint, and the like, presently provide for the presentation and dissemination of customer account and network data management information to their customers predominantly by enabling customers (clients) to directly dial-up, e.g., via a modem, to the entity's application servers to access their account information, or, alternately, via dedicated communication lines, e.g., ISDN, T-1, etc., enabling account information requests to be initiated through their computer terminal running, for example, a Windows®-based graphical user interface. The requests are processed by the entity's application servers, which retrieves the requested customer information, e.g., from one or more databases, processes and formats the information for downloading to the client's computer terminal.
Some types of data, e.g., “priced” call detail data pertaining to a customer's telecommunications number usage, is made available for customers in an aggregated or processed form and provided to customers, e.g., on a monthly basis. This type of data is analyzed to determine, for example, asset usage and trend information necessary, which is required for network managers to make critical business decisions. As an example, the assignee telecommunications carrier MCI Corporation provides an MCI ServiceView (“MSV”) product line for its business customers which includes several client-server based data management applications. One of these applications, referred to as “Perspective”, provides call usage and analysis information that focuses on the presentation of and priced call detail data and reports from an MCI Perspective Data Server (“StarPR”). Another client-server based data management application, referred to as “Traffic View”, focuses on the presentation of real time call detail data and network traffic analysis/monitor information as provided from an MCI Traffic view server. Particularly, with respect to MCI's Perspective system, customers are provided with their monthly priced and discounted raw call detail data, call detail aggregates, and statistical historical summary data. As such, the Perspective architecture is organized primarily as a batch midrange-based server data delivery mechanism with the data being typically delivered on a monthly basis, allowing for “delayed” trending, call pattern analysis, repricing and invoice validation based on the customer's call detail data. The trending, analysis, and repricing functionality is maintained in workstation-based software provided to customers for installation at customer sites on their PCS.
FIG. 1
illustrates the current architecture
10
for Perspective and Traffic View Systems which presently run on separate environments and are maintained independently of each other. The StarPR server provides a batch reporting mechanism focused primarily on providing billing data to 1-800/8xx, VNET, Vision, and other MCI customers and is used by MCI customers predominantly to do internal charge backs and to analyze billing usage. Alternately, or in addition, the customers use the data provided to them to do call traffic analysis, similar to TVS.
With specific reference to
FIG. 1
, the data collected is in the form of call detail records which are created by various MCI/Concert switches (not shown) whenever a telephone call is attempted in the MCI network and which includes information about call type, call origination and termination locations, date and time, added intelligent network services, any hop information, product type and other relevant information about the call. The Network Information Concentrator (“NIC”) component
15
is a network element that collects the CDRs and sends them to appropriate locations via a Global Statistical Engine
17
. The Global Statistical Engine
17
collects the CDRs and transforms, processes, and sends them to the TVS
20
. The TVS provides access to this data through various statistical reports and real time monitoring engine
22
(“RTM”).
The CDRs from are also sent to the billing system which applied billing based on call detail values. These “priced” CDRs are known as Billing Detail Records (“BDRs”) and are sent to a Perspective Host (“Phost”) server
25
. The Phost server
25
filters out the BDRs not pertaining to the “Perspective” customers, applies various transformations to the customer's raw call detail data to generate summary data, and generates and formats the data for the various Perspective customers. This data is then compressed, sent to a document service center (“DSC”) and CD-ROM dispatcher (“CDD”)
34
entities which respectively, uncompresses the data and burns CD-ROMs comprising the customer's raw call detail data and summary data, in addition to reference files and possibly application software (if not previously owned) enabling customers to perform analysis and trending of their Perspective data. These CD-ROMs are sent to the customers, usually on a billing cycle or monthly basis, who view their data through a Perspective workstation-based software application residing on that customer's CPE, e.g., PC or workstation
36
.
As shown in
FIG. 1
, the existing Perspective Host 25 mainframe-based data delivery system interfaces with all Perspective upstream feed systems, including billing systems and order entry, and processes the data, e.g., creates canned aggregates, for delivery to the document service center.
The following upstream feed systems include: 1) order entry information from a customer order entry system
19
(“CORE”) and which information is used by the Perspective Host to determine what customer data to process and where to send it; 2) VNET and Vision monthly billing data feeds from a commercial billing system (“NBCS”) system
23
; 3) a Toll-free monthly billing data feed from a T/F database feed
27
; and, a Concert Virtual Network Services (“CVNS”) product feed from a CVNS database
31
. In order for all the CDR and data feed information to be processed by the Phost server
25
, various reference files and processing rules are provided including: alphanumeric translation reference files from the NCBS billing system
23
and an NPA/NXX-state-city and country code lookup reference file originating from a calling area data base (“CADB”)
35
.
While effective for its purpose, the current data management and presentation architecture only provides customers with their priced call detail data on a monthly basis, usually in the form of a canned report. This is not sufficient for an increasing number of customers who, to remain competitive, are required to have updated and real-time access to their data to enable them to make their critical business decisions quicker. Moreover, there are a variety of independent data management tools and legacy reporting systems having disparate systems and infrastructures providing little or no cross application interoperability and data sharing, thus, requiring customers to use separate applications to gain access to their data.
Furthermore, existing telecommunications service provider reporting systems are limited in that reports generated are of a narrow view, and are delivered at predetermined times with predetermined formats. These prior art reporting systems do not enable the generation of ad-hoc reports. Moreover, legacy platforms including reporting data are reaching the architectural limits of scalability in terms of the total customers they can support, total online data they can present, total historical data they can keep and type and number of applications they can support.
It would thus be highly desirable to provide a data management product that is a Web-based (Internet and IIntranet) client-server application providing priced call detail
Brandt Andre R.
Pillai Sajan J.
MCI WorldCom Inc.
Wiley David
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