Method and system for managing quality of service in a network

• US 20040003080A1
• Filed: 06/27/2002
• Published: 01/01/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 06/27/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Huff, Robert L.
• Granted Patent: US 7,426,560 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/225
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0896 Bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities flow or congestion control using dynamic resource allocation, e.g. in-call renegotiation, H04L47/76
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5054 Automatic deployment of services triggered by the service manager, e.g. service implementation by automatic configuration of network components
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0817 by checking functioning

Abstract

According to embodiments, the present invention comprises a method and system for managing support of quality of service requirements for various clients of a telecommunications network at a server level. Servers assigned to the various clients may include quality of service descriptors that identify relative priorities of the clients. In the event of a failure or reduced performance of a server, for example, an assignment of respective servers to respective clients may be changed based on the relative priorities of the respective clients.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

(i) for a client of a data center of a telecommunications network, assigning a quality of service requirement at a server level; and

(ii) managing support of said quality of service requirement at said server level.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein (i) comprises:

(iii) providing a quality of service descriptor in each of a plurality of servers of said data center, said quality of service descriptor specifying a respective quality of service requirement for a respective client assigned a respective server.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein (ii) comprises:

(iv) monitoring a performance of each of said servers, and

(v) in the event of a reduced performance of at least one of said servers, changing an assignment of said servers to respective clients based on information in respective quality of service descriptors of said servers.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein (v) comprises:

(vi) re-assigning a server assigned to a first client with a first quality of service requirement to a second client with a second quality of service requirement, wherein said second quality of service requirement is higher than said first quality of service requirement.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein (iv) comprises:

(vii) maintaining a database of said quality of service descriptors of said servers.

6. A server for a telecommunications network, said server comprising a quality of service descriptor identifying a quality of service to be provided to a client of said network server.

7. The server of claim 6, wherein said quality of service descriptor includes:

an identifier of a client assigned said server;

an identifier of a service provided by said server;

a performance parameter of said server; and

a quality of service level to be provided said client.

8. The server of claim 6, wherein said quality of service descriptor is a data storage area in an integrated circuit chipset included in said server.

9. The server of claim 8, wherein said data storage area is a 32-bit register.

10. The server of claim 8, wherein said quality of service descriptor is writable to assign said server to a different client.

12. The data center of claim 6, further comprising executable program code to manage the allocation of said plurality of servers among clients, based on information included in said quality of service descriptor.

13. The data center of claim 7, wherein said program code is configured to reassign a first server assigned to a first client to a second client assigned a second server, when the quality of service descriptor of said second server indicates that said second client has a higher priority than said first client.

11. A data center in a telecommunications network, said data center comprising a plurality of servers, each server including a quality of service descriptor identifying a quality of service to be provided to a client of said data center.

14. A machine-readable medium tangibly embodying computer-executable instructions, which when executed implement a process comprising:

(i) maintaining client priority information for a plurality of clients of a data center of a network service, each of said clients being assigned at least one server;

(ii) re-assigning clients to different servers based on said priority information.

15. The machine-readable medium of claim 14, wherein (ii) comprises updating a quality of service descriptor of a re-assigned server, said quality of service descriptor specifying a priority level of a client assigned said re-assigned server.

16. A system comprising:

a plurality of servers each having an interface to a network and a quality of service descriptor identifying a quality of service to be provided to a client of a respective server; and

a managing server comprising;

computer-executable instructions stored in a memory; and

a processor coupled to said memory to execute said instructions;

wherein said instructions are configured to;

maintain client priority information for a plurality of clients of said plurality of server computers based on priority information in said quality of service descriptors; and

perform a reassignment of clients to different servers based on said priority information.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein to perform said reassignment, said instructions are configured to re-assign a first server assigned to a first client to a second client assigned a second server, when the quality of service descriptor of said second server indicates that said second client has a higher priority than said first client.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein to perform said reassignment, said instructions are further configured to update the quality of service descriptor of a re-assigned server, said quality of service descriptor specifying a priority level of a client assigned said re-assigned server.