Transaction process for the provisioning of rules in a rule-based network

• US 20050015503A1
• Filed: 07/08/2004
• Published: 01/20/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 07/18/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Alcatel SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Edwiges, Maurice, Robinson, Julien
• Granted Patent: US 7,949,735 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/228
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/046 comprising network management agents or mobile agents therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0893 Assignment of logical groups to network elements
• 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

Abstract

The invention proposes a transaction process for the provisioning of rules in a network which includes at least one rule server and one rule server client. The process includes a first stage of transmission from the server to the client of a request for acceptance of the provisioning of a set of rules. The process also includes a second stage of reservation by the client of the resources necessary for the reception and the putting into application of the rules if the request is accepted by the client. The process includes a third stage of response to the request, from the client to the server, and a fourth stage for provisioning the set of rules to the client if the response to the request is favorable. When the network has several clients, each of the clients responds to the request from the server, and the provisioning stage is executed only if each response is favorable.

Claims

1. A transaction process transaction process for the provisioning of rules in a network that includes

a rule server, and

a server client,

where the transaction process includes the following stages:

(a) transmission from the server to the client of a request for acceptance of the provisioning of a set of rules;

(b) reservation by the client of the necessary resources for the reception and putting into application of the rules, if the request is accepted by the client;

(c) response to the request, from the client to the server; and

(d) provisioning of all of rules from the server to the client if the response in stage (c) is favorable.

2. A process according to claim 1, where the network includes several clients, and in which stages (a), (b) and (c) are carried out for each of the clients, each responding to the request from the server during stage (c), and in which provisioning stage (d) is carried out only if each client response is favorable.

3. A process according to claim 2, that also includes a stage (e) for releasing the resources reserved by the clients at stage (b), if a client response is not favorable.

4. A process according to claim 1, which also includes a stage (c′

) for the transmission of an error message from the client to the server if the response to the request is not favorable.

5. A process according to claim 4, where the network also includes:

a rule manager,

which in its turn includes a stage (c″

) for transmission from the server to the rule manager of a message that includes at least part of the information contained in the error message sent at stage (c′

).

6. A process according to claim 1, where the network also includes:

several network elements which are clients of the server client, and

a network element manager,

in which reservation of the resources by the client at stage (b) is effected following a preliminary stage (a′

) of communication between the server client and the network element manager.

7. A process according to claim 6, where the network element manager is an integral part of the server client, and in which the communication stage (a′

) is an operation within the server client.

8. A rule server which has resources to implement the process according to claim 1.