Multiplex communications – Pathfinding or routing – Combined circuit switching and packet switching
Reexamination Certificate
1999-05-11
2003-12-02
Cangialosi, Salvatore (Department: 2732)
Multiplex communications
Pathfinding or routing
Combined circuit switching and packet switching
C370S230000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06657993
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to local telephone service, and, more particularly, to the area of providing an economic, flexible transmission medium between the serving switch and remote line units.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The increase in the number of telephone lines in use has exceeded the expectations of even the most optimistic operating company. Such increases, while good for revenue, require operating companies to scramble for equipment to support all of the new telephone lines being installed throughout its service region. In predigital days, a new switching office was required every time a previous switching office's capacity was exceeded. In more modern times, remote line units connected to a switching system via trunk group has increased the range and the capacity of modern switches. However, operating companies must provision their equipment for worst case (or near worst case) usage, which leads to overbuilding the system hence unnecessary cost.
An example of the current art is shown in FIG.
1
. In a local service area
10
, a telephone switching system (“switch”) such as a 5ESS® switch manufactured by Lucent Technologies is connected to the public switch telephone network (PSTN)
14
via a plurality of lines and trunk groups. The PSTN
14
comprises other local switches, long distance switches, wireless systems, etc. In order to support the diverse residential and business locations a telephone switch
12
is connected to one or more subscriber loop carriers illustrated here by subscriber loop carrier (SLC)
16
and
18
. Subscriber loop carrier
16
serves analog (plain old telephone service or POTS) telephones
20
and
22
and ISDN telephone
24
in residential area
26
. Subscriber loop carrier
18
is shown as supporting a plurality of telephone systems represented by POTS telephone
30
and ISDN telephones
32
and
34
in business campus
36
. Each SLC
16
and
18
provides the basic battery, over voltage, ringing, supervision, hybrid and testing (BORSHT) functions for its respective subscriber telephones and multiplexes traffic for their respective subscriber telephones on trunk groups
40
and
42
, respectively. In the current art, trunk groups
40
and
42
are optical trunk groups that have a large bandwidth. Each trunk
40
and
42
is connect to a host terminal
44
and
46
. Host terminals
44
and
46
provide conversion of calls from the transmission format to a line appearance at telephone switch
12
. In this manner, calls. destined, for example, for telephone
20
appears to telephone switch
12
to be a line directly connected to switch
12
.
A problem in the art, however, is that the maximum anticipated traffic must be supported by both subscriber loop carrier
16
and subscriber loop carrier
18
. Therefore, the business campus must be able to support maximum usage (usually, Monday morning between the hours of 9:00 and 11:00) and thus host terminal
46
, trunk
42
and subscriber loop carrier
18
must have the capacity to carry such traffic. Conversely, residential area
26
must be engineered to carry traffic for peak usage days (such as Mother's Day, Christmas Day, etc.) expected in the residential area. Thus, host terminal
44
, trunk
40
and subscriber loop carrier
16
are engineered to a maximum bandwidth capacity for such traffic.
From the above scenario, it is clear that the operating company of telephone switch
12
has capacity that it is not using. When telephone usage at the business campus is at its peak, the residential area
26
is generally at its lowest. Conversely, when residential usage
26
is at its peak, telephones on the business campus
36
is not in high use. Thus, depending on the time of day (and day of the week) much of the capacity of one or the other subscriber loop carrier
16
or
18
is being underutilized while, conversely, the capacity of the other subscriber loop carrier is being pushed near its limit.
Therefore, a problem in the art is that there is no dynamic, flexible manner in which to allocate bandwidth to remote subscriber loop carriers
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
This problem is solved and a technical advance is achieved in the art by a system and method that uses the flexible bandwidth of a data network in order to provide more flexible services to wireline terminals. The system comprises a telephone switch configured to provide telephony service to a plurality of wireline terminals and an access network head end connected via circuit switch transmission facilities to the telephone switch and configured to manage reserved data bandwidth (“bearer channels”) in a data network. The system also includes a data network carrying the bearer channels and a line unit separate from the telephone switch connected to the data network and to the wireline terminals configured to interface wireline terminals to one of the bearer channels. The access network head end has a controller having a table for translating line identification to a line unit address in the data network. The access network head end allocates a portion of its reserved bandwidth to each remote line unit with which it is associated. The amount of bandwidth is variable so that the access network head end can change the allocation to support changing traffic patterns according to time of day, day of week, etc.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5555244 (1996-09-01), Gupta et al.
patent: 5724355 (1998-03-01), Bruno et al.
patent: 5917804 (1999-06-01), Shah et al.
patent: 6215796 (2001-04-01), Smith, Jr.
patent: 6438141 (2002-08-01), Hanko et al.
patent: 0824298 (1998-02-01), None
patent: 0829995 (1998-03-01), None
patent: 2311690 (1997-01-01), None
Haselton, E. F., “A PCM Frame Switching Concept Leading To Burst Switching Network Architecture”, Integrating Communication For World Progress, IEEE ICC, vol. 3, Boston, MA, Jun. 19-22, 1983 pp. 1401-1406.
Casanova Lynn Marie
Robinson Dana Beverly
Sand Paul Raymond
Young Claudis L.
Johannesen Michael B.
Lucent Technologies - Inc.
Santema Steven R.
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