Method for providing quality-of-service based services in a packet network

• US 20070140113A1
• Filed: 12/15/2005
• Published: 06/21/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/15/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: AT&T Knowledge Ventures, L.P. (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Sbc Knowledge Ventures, L.P.
• Inventors: Gemelos, Steven
• Granted Patent: US 8,077,609 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/229
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5009 Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF]
• 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 43/091 Measuring contribution of individual network components to actual service level
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/15 in relation to multipoint traffic arrangements for broadcast or multicast in data networks H04L12/18
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/2408 for supporting different services, e.g. a differentiated services [DiffServ] type of service
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/2433 Allocation of priorities to traffic types
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/70 Admission control; Resource allocation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/788 Autonomous allocation of resources
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/805 QOS or priority aware
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/822 Collecting or measuring resource availability data

Abstract

The disclosure provides a system and method for providing a service in a packet-switched network at a selected Quality of Service (QoS) level. The method includes receiving a request for a service from a customer gateway at server connected to the packet-switched network; correlating the requested service to available network resources; and enabling the network to provide the requested service based on a result of the correlation.

Claims

1. A computer readable medium, accessible to a server, comprising:

a computer program embedded within the computer readable medium, the computer program, comprising;

a set of instructions to receive a request from a customer equipment for a service over a packet-switched network;

a set of instructions that determines availability of the network to provide the service at a selected quality of service level; and

a set of instructions that enables the network to provide the service if the network is available to provide the service at the selected quality of service level.

2. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the computer program further comprises:

a set of instructions for determining a load on network elements associated with the provision of the service.

3. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the computer program further comprises a set of instructions that determines if providing the service would degrade the Quality of Service level for other customers below a threshold.

4. The computer readable medium of claim 3, wherein the computer program further comprises a set of instructions that determines a metric relating to a network element.

5. The computer readable medium of claim 4, wherein the computer program further comprises a set of instructions that enables the network to provide the service if the metric meets a selected criteria.

6. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the computer program further comprises a set of instructions that correlates the requested service to available network resources to determine the availability of the network to provide the service at the selected quality of service level.

7. The computer readable medium of claim 4, wherein the computer program further comprises instructions to retrieve the metric from a database or query the network to obtain the metric in real-time.

8. A method of providing a service in a packet-switched network, comprising:

receiving a request for a service from a customer device;

determining availability of the network to provide the requested service at a selected quality of service level; and

enabling the network to provide the service if the network is available to provide the service at the selected quality of service level.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein determining the availability comprises determining a current load on network elements providing the service.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein determining the availability comprises determining a metric of a network element.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the metric is selected from group consisting of bandwidth, mean packet transfer delay, jitter, packet loss ratio, packet error, a capacity of a network element, load on a network element, and an electrical property of a transport link.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising enabling the network if the determined metric meets a selected criterion.

13. The method of claim 8, wherein the selected quality of service level is different for a voice service and a data service.

14. The method of claim 8, further comprising determining a utilization level of a network element and enabling the network if the utilization level is below a threshold.

15. The method of claim 10, wherein determining the metric is done by one of (i) determining a real-time value of the metric, and (ii) estimating a value of the metric based on stored data.

16. A packet-switched network, comprising:

a plurality of network elements, including at least a first server that transmits data for a service over at least one transport link;

a second server that controls;

a database accessible to the second server for storing values of metrics relating to the plurality of network elements;

a computer program accessible to the second server,

the computer program comprising;

a set of instructions to receive a request for service from a customer device;

a set of instructions to determine a metric relating to the network elements; and

a set of instructions to enable the network elements to provide the requested service if the metric meets a selected criterion.

17. The network of claim 16, wherein the computer program further comprises:

a set of instructions that sends a signal message to the customer device if the metric does not meet the selected criteria.

18. The network of claim 16, wherein the computer program further comprises a set of instructions that obtains the metric as one of (i) in real-time;

and (ii) by sending a query to a network element upon receipt of the request for service from the customer device.

19. The network of claim 16 further comprising a switch that sends the request for service to the second server.

20. The network of claim 16, wherein the computer program further comprises a set of instructions that selects a quality of service level that is different for a voice service and a data service.