Telephonic communications – With usage measurement
Reexamination Certificate
1998-08-03
2001-05-15
Smith, Creighton (Department: 2742)
Telephonic communications
With usage measurement
C379S134000, C379S164000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06233326
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to switching systems for telephone services and, more particularly, to a method for locating busy lines that that cause blockages for possible alternative connections.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Call blockages force the local switch to make more attempts before an off-hook telephone obtains a dial tone. On a switch with too many blockages, an off-hook telephone may not receive a dial tone at all. A previously known method of determining call and line blockages relied on probability not facts. This previous method used telephone traffic measurement studies, such as those available from TRAFFIC 30 reports, which were based on 30 minute reports. Each report would only provide the one hundred call seconds (CCS) method which measures of telephone traffic load obtained by multiplying the number of calls in an hours by the average holding time per call in seconds & dividing the product by 100. Using this type of report, the maximum possible CCS that can be handled by 1 circuit in 1 hour is 36. However, the CCS is a usage statistic, it is not a measure of whether or not a line is involved in a call a blockage. By operation of the theory that the most busy line is most likely to cause the most call blockages, the busiest line or lines were moved to other trunk groups or other switching modules to alleviate blockages. Typically, to get meaningful information, TRAFFIC 30 reports for days even months are gathered for statistical analysis. But even then, not all of the lines experiencing blockages will be found because of the imprecision of statistical techniques. Further, often by the time the sample data has been accumulated, calling patterns and blocking patterns have changed, leaving the data stale and the actions taken on the data potentially ineffective.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus to determine blockage of actual lines from data, not just statistical probabilities.
It is another object of the invention to provide a method and apparatus that can locate actual blockages in a few hours instead of the many days that were previously required to get a probable answer.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Briefly stated, in accordance with one aspect of the invention, the foregoing objects are achieved by providing a method that obtains and processes data concerning individual call blockages not just probabilities. Until very recently this data was not reported, but a new software reports, such as Balance by Lucent Technologies, make data about actual call blockage data. Additionally, the method determines if the majority of the blockages are caused by a single line or a larger subset of lines.
In a specific embodiment, the foregoing objects are achieved by providing a method for processing call blockage data which includes the steps of stripping a plurality of data fields out of the processing call blockage data; separating the call blockage data fields into two separate sets of data designated as an A-Link blockage data set and as a B-Link Blockage data set; said separation into the A-Link data set and the B-Link data set is performed according to values of a link blockage data field of said plurality of data fields; processing the A-Link Blockage data to create four blocking line equipment numbers (LENs) for each blockage; processing the A-Link Blockage data again only using a first set of 7 digits of field
3
creating a data set created that is subsequently sorted and counted to create a file of each unique hardware group of 64 LENs referred to as a blocking line unit grid; processing the B-Link Blockage data again using a first 5 digits of Field
3
creating a data set that is subsequently sorted and counted to create a file of each unique blocking line unit; checking all blockage data to determine if any hardware outages caused any of the blockages; and presenting all blockages in chronological order by LEN number and also in chronological order by Directory Number. With this method besides identification of individual call blockage lines, call blockage lines are identified in groups larger than one and any hardware outage contributing to a call blockages is also identified.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5081671 (1992-01-01), Raith et al.
patent: 5230017 (1993-07-01), Alexander
patent: 5684868 (1997-11-01), Alexander
patent: 5825769 (1998-10-01), O'Reilly et al.
patent: 5896573 (1999-04-01), Yang et al.
patent: 5905785 (1999-05-01), Dunn et al.
patent: 6021191 (2000-02-01), Ash et al.
Davis Ted Jeffery
Jackson Michael Grady
Lucent Technologies - Inc.
Penrod Jack R.
Smith Creighton
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