Apparatus and method for improving short message service dependability

• US 20070178919A1
• Filed: 02/10/2006
• Published: 08/02/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 02/02/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Mavenir Systems Incorporated (Mavenir Group Holdings Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Airwide Solutions Inc.
• Inventors: Wang, Jiwei, Huggett, Robert, Worth, Nicholas
• Granted Patent: US 7,774,006 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/466
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/14 Short messaging services, e.g. short message services [SMS] or unstructured supplementary service data [USSD]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/184 Messaging devices, e.g. message centre

Abstract

An apparatus and a method for improving short message service dependability by reducing the risk of an SM being loss due to failure in a network having both an SMS routers and an SMSC and in which forward and store delivery or Early-Ack is enabled in the router. Alternative apparatus and methods are presented which mitigate the possibility of losing an SM before it is delivered to a recipient or received and persistently stored by the SMSC by placing the SM in a survivable storage medium before acknowledgement of the SM is sent to the submitter of the SM and by providing a recovery mechanism that can re-attempt a delivery or a forwarding of the SM, based on the content of the survivable storage medium, in the case of a failure.

Claims

1. A method for improving short message service (SMS) dependability in a mobile telephony network having a short message service center (SMSC) that can provide for persistently storing and forwarding of short messages (SM) to respective addressees and a router that first receives the SM and mitigates the number of SM forwarded to the SMSC by attempting to deliver a portion of the SM received, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving a SM from a submitter;

creating a first log entry, including a copy of the SM, in a log store;

acknowledging receipt of the SM to the submitter;

attempting one of a first delivery attempt (FDA) of the SM to an addressee and a forwarding (FWD) of the SM to the SMSC;

on successful completion of the one of the FDA and the FWD, creating a second log entry, including an indication of the successful completion, in the log store;

on recovery from a failure, determining if the SM might have been lost by searching the log store for the second log entry and if the second log entry is not found re-attempting the one of a FDA and a FWD using the copy of the SM included in the first log entry;

wherein the log store is a survivable storage medium whose contents can survive a failure of the router and wherein the step of creating a first log entry occurs before the step of acknowledging.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein log entries are written sequentially to the log store.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the first log entry includes an indication of whether a FDA or a FWD is to be attempted and in the case of the FWD also includes an identifier of the SMSC.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of starting an acknowledge timer when the SM is received;

and wherein the steps of;

creating a first log entry; and

acknowledging receipt;

occur when the acknowledge timer has expired and a successful completion of the one of the FDA and the FWD has not occurred.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the duration of the acknowledge timer is less than an anticipated acknowledge time-out duration for the submitter.

6. A method for improving short message service (SMS) dependability in a mobile telephony network having a short message service center (SMSC) that can provide for persistently storing and forwarding of short messages (SM) to respective addressees and a router that first receives the SM and mitigates the number of SM forwarded to the SMSC by attempting to deliver a portion of the SM received, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving a SM from a submitter;

creating a copy of the SM in a replicate store;

acknowledging receipt of the SM to the submitter;

attempting one of a first delivery attempt (FDA) of the SM to an addressee and a forwarding (FWD) of the SM to the SMSC;

on successful completion of the one of the FDA and the FWD, deleting the copy of the SM in the replicate store;

on recovery from a failure, determining if the SM might have been lost by searching the replicate store for the copy of the SM and if the copy of the SM is found reattempting the one of a FDA and a FWD using the copy of the SM;

wherein the replicate store is a survivable storage medium whose contents can survive a failure of the router and wherein the step of creating a copy of the SM occurs before the step of acknowledging.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising the steps of:

starting a message timer after the step of creating a copy of the SM; and

reattempting the one of the FDA and the FWD when the message timer has expired and the copy of the SM has not been deleted from the replicate store.

8. The method of claim 6, further comprising the step of starting an acknowledge timer when the SM is received;

and wherein the steps of;

creating a copy of the SM; and

acknowledging receipt;

occur when the acknowledge timer has expired and a successful completion of the one of the FDA and the FWD has not occurred.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the duration of the acknowledge timer is less than an anticipated acknowledge time-out duration for the submitter.

10. An apparatus for improving short message service (SMS) dependability in a mobile telephony network comprising:

a mobile telephony network interface adapted to receiving a short message (SM) from a submitter in the mobile telephony network and for sending an acknowledgement to the submitter;

a fixed network interface adapted to forwarding the SM to an addresses;

an SMSC interface adapted to forwarding the SM to a short message service center (SMSC);

a log store adapted to storing log entries and to preserving the log entries in the case of a failure of the apparatus;

a log manager adapted to adding and retrieving log entries to and from the log store;

a SM manager adapted to;

creating a first log entry, including a copy of the SM, in the log store via the log manager;

sending an acknowledgement to the submitter via the mobile telephony network interface after creating the first log entry;

attempting one of a first delivery attempt (FDA) of the SM to an addressee and a forwarding (FWD) of the SM to the SMSC, via the fixed network interface and the SMSC interface respectively; and

creating, on successful completion of the one of the FDA and the FWD, a second log entry, including an indication of the successful completion, in the log store via the log manager; and

a recovery manager adapted to determining, on recovery from a failure, if the SM might have been lost by searching the log store for the second log entry and if the second log entry is not found re-attempting the one of a FDA and a FWD using the copy of the SM included in the first log entry.

11. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the log store stores log entries sequentially.

12. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the first log entry includes an indication of whether a FDA or a FWD is to be attempted and in the case of the FWD also includes an identifier of the SMSC.

13. The apparatus of claim 10, further comprising a timer manager adapted to starting an acknowledge timer when the SM is received;

and wherein the SM manager is further adapter to;

creating a first log entry; and

sending acknowledgement;

when the acknowledge timer has expired and a successful completion of the one of the FDA and the FWD has not occurred.

14. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein the duration of the acknowledge timer is less than an anticipated acknowledge time-out duration for the submitter.

15. An apparatus for improving short message service (SMS) dependability in a mobile telephony network comprising:

a mobile telephony network interface adapted to receiving a short message (SM) from a submitter in the mobile telephony network and for sending an acknowledgement to the submitter;

a fixed network interface adapted to forwarding the SM to an addresses;

an SMSC interface adapted to forwarding the SM to a short message service center (SMSC);

a replicate store adapted to storing a copy of the SM, and to preserving the copy of the SM in the case of a failure of the apparatus;

a replicate manager adapted to adding and deleting the copy of the SM to and from the replicate store;

a SM manager adapted to;

adding a copy of the SM to the replicate store via the replicate manager;

sending an acknowledgement to the submitter via the mobile telephony network interface after creating the first log entry;

attempting one of a first delivery attempt (FDA) of the SM to an addressee and a forwarding (FWD) of the SM to the SMSC, via the fixed network interface and the SMSC interface respectively; and

deleting, on successful completion of the one of the FDA and the FWD, the copy of the SM from the replicate store via the replicate manager; and

a recovery manager adapted to determining, on recovery from a failure, if the SM might have been lost by searching the replicate store for the copy of the SM and if the copy of the SM is not found re-attempting the one of a FDA and a FWD using the copy of the SM.

16. The apparatus of claim 15, the SM manager further adapted to:

starting a message timer after creating a copy of the SM;

reattempting the one of the FDA and the FWD when the message timer has expired and the copy of the SM has not been deleted from the replicate store.

17. The apparatus of claim 15, further comprising a timer manager adapted to starting an acknowledge timer when the SM is received;

and wherein the SM manager is further adapter to;

creating a first log entry; and

sending acknowledgement;

when the acknowledge timer has expired and a successful completion of the one of the FDA and the FWD has not occurred.

18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein the duration of the acknowledge timer is less than an anticipated acknowledge time-out duration for the submitter.