Method and apparatus for SIP messaging

• US 20060268857A1
• Filed: 05/31/2005
• Published: 11/30/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 05/31/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: WSOU Investments, LLC (WSOU Holdings, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent USA, Inc. (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Bessis, Thierry, Cortes, Mauricio, Esteban, Jairo O.
• Granted Patent: US 7,644,165 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/389
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/90 Buffering arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/901 using storage descriptor, e.g. read or write pointers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1104 Session initiation protocol [SIP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/22 Parsing or analysis of headers

Abstract

A method and apparatus for encoding a SIP message into an internal binary format so that it can be treated much more efficiently by both the SIP stack layers and the application. Only one memory buffer is used to handle any sort of SIP message. For this reason, this new SIP message may be called a “mono-block” structure. It allows each SIP header'"'"'s raw text from the original SIP message to be directly referred within the SIP mono-block with no additional copy. Only SIP headers that are “used” by the application, or by some SIP stack layer are parsed to form a “decoded” header object. The header parsing is made “on demand” at the moment header is accessed. Headers not used are not decoded and are left in text format with no additional processing needed.

Claims

1. In a communications network, a method of processing a sip message:

comprising;

receiving a SIP message, wherein the SIP message includes a plurality of headers and text;

allocating a new mono block structure, the structure including a plurality of zones;

reading the SIP message;

creating at least one header descriptor in a first zone in the mono block structure;

copying the SIP message to second zone in the mono block structure; and

pre-parsing the second zone.

2. The method defined in claim 1, wherein a transport layer in a SIP stack allocates the mono block structure.

3. The method defined in claim 1, wherein pre-parsing the second zone comprises:

updating the corresponding header descriptor in the mono block structure for each header that is recognized;

pointing a raw text pointer to the corresponding SIP text stored in the second zone of the mono block structure;

storing the actual length of the SIP text in the header descriptor; and

leaving a pointer to the decoded portion of the text empty.

4. The method defined in claim 3, wherein the plurality of zones in the mono block structure includes a management information memory zone, a table of content, a dynamic objects zone, and a free zone.

5. The method defined in claim 3, wherein the plurality of zones in the mono block structure includes a management information memory zone having a fixed length, a table of content having a fixed length, an initial raw text zone having a variable length, a dynamic objects zone having a variable length, and a free zone having a variable length.

6. The method defined in claim 5, wherein the first zone comprises the table of content of the mono block structure.

7. The method defined in claim 6, wherein the second zone comprises the initial raw text zone of the mono block structure.

8. The method defined in claim 7, wherein the mono block structure further comprises a set of differential pointers.

9. The method defined in claim 8, wherein each header comprises one or more objects.

10. In a communications network, a method of creating a SIP message comprising:

allocating a mono block structure, the mono block structure including a management information memory zone, a table of content, and a free zone;

creating at least one header descriptor in the table of content;

creating a string in the free zone that represents raw text for each header;

binding the raw text to the corresponding header descriptor in the table of content; and

marking each header to show that it has not been parsed.

11. The method defined in claim 10, wherein the management information memory zone has a fixed length, the table of content has a fixed length, and the free zone has a variable length.

12. In a communications network, an apparatus for processing a SIP message comprising:

a management information memory zone;

a table of content;

an initial SIP raw text message zone;

a dynamic objects zone;

a free zone; and

a set of differential pointers.

13. The apparatus defined in claim 12, wherein the management information memory zone has a fixed length, the table of content has a fixed length, the initial raw text zone has a variable length, the dynamic objects zone has a variable length, and the free zone has a variable length.

14. The apparatus defined in claim 12, further comprising a SIP stack, wherein the SIP stack includes a set of layers for proxy applications.

15. The apparatus defined in claim 14, wherein the set of layers includes a call layer, a proxy dialog layer, a proxy layer, a transaction layer, a transport layer, a UA call layer, and a UA dialog layer.