Intelligent network with distributed service control function

Details Intelligent network with distributed service control function Intelligent network with distributed service control function

1998-03-10

2003-01-07

Geckil, Mehmet B. (Department: 2152)

Telephonic communications

Plural exchange network or interconnection

With interexchange network routing

C379S221080, C379S221100, C379S221120

Reexamination Certificate

active

06504923

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to intelligent communications networks, commonly called intelligent networks (INs), and particularly, but not exclusively, to service control points for use in INs.
2. Description of the Related Art
IN techniques have been understood for sometime to offer a flexible and possibly more cost effective route to the development and deployment of advanced telecommunications call handling services than traditional methods. Essentially, IN techniques effectively consist of the separation of call processing functions within a telephone exchange, or equivalent entity, from the service logic which provides the actual telecommunications service—such as “Freefone” type services typified by the 0800 numbering range in the United Kingdom.
Standards have been developed by a number of organisations which embody the concepts of IN techniques and identify a number of key functional components. Many of these components are identified in
FIG. 1
of the drawings which is a schematic diagram of the structure of a known IN. In this structure, the service logic for the IN is embodied in computer programs executing on either a service control point (SCP), or an adjunct processor (not shown).
The present invention is concerned with the design and organisation of the computing resources realising the SCP or adjunct processor elements of an IN. With early implementations of IN systems, the computing resources realising the structure, i.e. the platform, of the SCP or adjunct processor elements of INs were provided by largely proprietary computing platforms—many of which were little more than subsections of the control processor from an existing telephone exchange design. These early implementations were complemented by second generation platforms which used commercially available computer systems (also referred to as data processors)—thereby reducing the cost of the platform. However the stringent requirements placed on these systems for continuous service availability and reliability to match those expected of a modern communications network tended to result in the use of fault tolerant, all be it commercial, computer systems.
In either case, the practice has been to deploy systems as mated pairs to minimise the risk of total service outage. This has led to the identification of an inherent weakness in these platforms since there is the need to maintain service data in synchronisation across all deployed computer systems. Whilst this is not a problem that is unique to the telecommunications industry, what makes the problem more complex is the requirement to achieve synchronisation within short timescales so as to minimise the effects of data synchronisation on service operation.
The above developments and requirements have logically led to the investigation of distributed processing techniques for solutions to the problems of scaling, application and data reuse and also platform reliability and integrity. Initiatives such as the Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture Consortium (TINA-C) dealing with distributed processing environment have striven to bring many of these issues to a conclusion over recent years.
The concept behind using distributed processing techniques in the realisation of IN service control points is the aim of achieving the desired availability, reliability and reuse through the software based redundancy afforded by distributed systems. This allows components of an application to be broken into self contained entities (e.g. clients or requesters of a function and servers or implementations of a function) which can realise applications which are highly resilient to failure due to the ability of a failed component to be dynamically replaced at run-time by simply selecting an alternative “server” element. An example architecture of this is shown in
FIG. 2
of the drawings which is a schematic diagram of the structure or architecture of a service control point of the network of FIG.
1
.
FIGS. 1 and 2
are described in detail later, but a sufficient understanding of the background of the present invention can be had with reference to only certain components of the intelligent network as follows.
An operations and support systems (OSS) domain which realises external operations and support systems, including customer handling etc.
A transport network domain which realises the telecommunications networks controlled from the platform.
A distributed service control point platform which realises the functionality delivering advanced telecommunications call handling services, such as “Freefone”, cashless services (Calling Card etc.).
The SCP connects to the controlled telecommunications networks via an appropriate signalling means. For the public switched telecommunications network (PSTN), this is currently via a modification of ITU-T (formerly known as CCITT) No.7 signalling system (referred to as SS7) using the Intelligent Network Application Protocol. SS7 is a general purpose protocol and may be replaced by a special purpose protocol in the future, but this is not a significant matter for the purposes of the present invention.
SS7 signalling messages flow from a controlled switch of the PSTN, referred to as a service switching point (SSP), to a signalling termination which forms part of the SCP. In practice, the signalling between an individual SSP and the SCP passes via one or more intermediate signalling transfer points (STPs), also known as signalling point relays which enable the messages to be rerouted in the event of a failure in the signalling network—either within the transmission circuits used or the terminating equipment.
The SCP comprises a number of physical and logical functions required to deliver, manage and enable services to be realised. These functions include:
applications servers which provide the physical and logical functions realising the service logic;
a network control signalling interface server, for example a SS7 server, which translates network signalling protocols into an application orientated protocol for use within the rest of the platform;
an intelligent peripheral (IP) capability to provide the various special functions required within services, such as voice announcements, voice messaging and other such special resources;
a data server capability to provide a managed data repository for all customer, service and management data associated with the platform;
an OSS server to manipulate management data originating on the platform into a form suitable for the external OSS systems and vice-versa, thereby hiding the inherently distributed nature of the platform and simplifying external OSS;
management systems for providing internal management of the platform;
other servers, as may be required, to provide new functions, interwork with other telecommunications service providers etc;
a collection of various physical computer systems interconnected via appropriate datacommunications services (e.g. a transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) data communications network, for example, a local area network and/or wide area network); and
a set of software mechanisms realising a distributed processing environment which enable executing computer programs to interact via the datacommunications services in a manner which is largely hidden from the application programmer, such as products conforming to the documentation produced by the Object Management Group (OMG) such as the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA).
Whilst the aims of adopting a distributed processing based solution are noble in themselves there are a large number of difficulties and implications in working out real solutions in practice. One of these issues relates to the implementation of the network control signalling interface server and how this connects to the controlled transport networks. This is driven by three main design issues:
the need for multiple signalling channels to achieve the concurrency desired (number of simultaneous call in progress);
the need for sufficient bandwidth i

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