Telephonic communications – With usage measurement – Call traffic recording or monitoring
Reexamination Certificate
1998-03-24
2001-03-20
Matar, Ahmad F. (Department: 2642)
Telephonic communications
With usage measurement
Call traffic recording or monitoring
C379S112030, C379S208010
Reexamination Certificate
active
06205212
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Field of the Invention
This invention relates to communications networks and to methods of controlling traffic therein.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,224,099, assigned to Stratacom, Inc., discloses a method of fair queuing and servicing call traffic in a telecommunication node which interfaces with a telecommunication system including a multiplicity of nodes. As each cell of bursty traffic is received it is placed in a respective subqueue according to a hopcount associated with the cell of bursty traffic, the hopcount being representative of the number of nodes traversed by the associated cell. Cells of traffic within the queue are serviced according to their associated hopcount, i.e. cells in the subqueue for the highest value of hopcount are serviced first. Cells that have spent too long in one subqueue are moved to the next higher subqueue, i.e. the queuing priority is increased, but the hopcount is unaffected. The hopcount associated with each cell of traffic is incremented as each cell of traffic is serviced. This prior art document is concerned with servicing incoming cells by giving priority to cells which have used more network resource.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of controlling traffic in an intelligent communications network having a distributed processing environment using software objects, the method comprising the steps of:
including, in requests generated by the objects, a service element parameter (SEP) field;
writing to the SEP field of each such request a SEP associated with the generating object, together with, in the event that the request is generated in response to receipt at the generating object of a request sent from another object, the contents of the SEP field of the received request;
detecting when any of the objects is in overload state; and
while a said object is in overload state, determining the extent of the processing which a request newly received at said object will receive in dependence upon the contents of the SEP field of said newly received request.
The present invention enables calls in an intelligent communications network to be prioritised according to the importance of the components of the network which have been involved in the processing of the call. This importance might be in relation to the amount of processing that a component provides, or the length of time that a component is associated with a call, e.g. in order for a customer to gain access to a service he may have to interact with an intelligent peripheral of the communications network, listening to voice prompts, entering an account number, a personal identification number and then various menu selections, so in this case the SEP of the intelligent peripheral would be set higher than a simple component such as a signalling server which would be involved in the call for less time. Alternatively, the importance might be in relation to the contractual status of the calling customer, e.g. a component can have different values of its SEP for different grades of service (e.g. premium, standard and economy) and apply the appropriate SEP in accordance with an identification of the customer, and hence the service level for which he has contracted, via his Calling Line Identity.
Preferably, the writing step copies the contents of the SEP field of a received request to the SEP field of the generated request, and writes the associated SEP into a respective sub-field of the SEP field.
Alternatively, the writing step generates the sum of said associated SEP and the contents of the SEP field of a received request, and writes this sum into the SEP field of the generated request.
The determining step may comprise comparing the contents of the SEP field of the newly received request with a predetermined threshold and rejecting the newly received request if the contents of its SEP field is less than the predetermined threshold.
Alternatively, the determining step may comprise comparing the contents of the SEP field of the newly received request with the contents of the SEP field of a previously received request whose processing has not been completed, and proceeding with the processing of the newly received request in preference to that of said previously received request if the contents of the SEP field of the newly received request has a higher value than the contents of the SEP field of the previously received request.
Preferably, the determining step performs the comparison only in respect of a previously received request which is still in a holding phase of processing and has not yet entered an active phase of processing.
The determining step may further comprise suspending the active phase of processing of the previously received request while the newly received request is being processed.
The determining step may further comprise rejecting a previously received request involved in the comparing step and whose SEP field contents has a lower value than that of the newly received request Involved in the comparing step.
A generating object may be associated with a plurality of SEPs having different respective values corresponding to different call types, and there may be included the steps of ascertaining the call type appropriate to a received request, and obtaining the corresponding SEP for use as the associated SEP in the writing step.
A generating object may be associated with a plurality of SEPs having different respective values corresponding to different service levels, and there may be included the steps of ascertaining the service level appropriate to a received request, and obtaining the corresponding SEP for use as the associated SEP in the writing step.
A generating object may be associated with a plurality of first SEPs having different respective values corresponding to different call types and a plurality of second SEPs having different respective values corresponding to different service levels, and there may be included the steps of ascertaining the call type and service level appropriate to a received request, obtaining the corresponding first and second SEPs and deriving therefrom, in accordance with a predetermined function, a single value for use as the associated SEP in the writing step.
The predetermined function may be the sum of the corresponding first and second SEPs.
Alternatively, the predetermined function may be the product of the corresponding first and second SEPs.
The step of ascertaining the service level preferably comprises comparing the contents of an address field of a newly received request with customers' addresses in the storage means, which customers are to be given a level of service higher than minimum service level.
Preferably, the detecting step provides an indication of overload state while the instantaneous total of requests which are being concurrently processed is equal to or greater than a predetermined threshold.
Preferably, there is included the step of changing the value of the respective SEP associated with one or more of the objects under the control of a management system of the communications network.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided an intelligent communications network having a distributed arrangement of service components which perform call processing by distributed processing involving the sending of requests, wherein each service component comprises:
storage means for storing an associated preassigned service element parameter (SEP);
means for generating requests including an SEP field;
means for writing to the SEP field of each generated request the associated SEP, together with, in the event that the generated request is generated in response to receipt at the service component of a request sent from another service component, the contents of the SEP field of the received request;
means for detecting when the service component is in overload state; and
means for determining, while the service component is in overload state, the extent of the processing which a newly received request will
British Telecommunications public limited company
Bui Bing
Matar Ahmad F.
Nixon & Vanderhye P.C.
LandOfFree
Method and apparatus for implementing software objects in an... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Method and apparatus for implementing software objects in an..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Method and apparatus for implementing software objects in an... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2474904