MANAGING CONFERENCE-CALLS

• US 20180288108A1
• Filed: 03/30/2017
• Published: 10/04/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Ali, Diaa Eldin Ali Mohamed Mohoud, Buda, Teodora Sandra, Assem Aly Salama, Hitham Ahmed, O'Sullivan, Patrick Joseph, Xu, Lei
• Granted Patent: US 10,367,857 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5067 Customer-centric QoS measurements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/08 Monitoring or testing based on specific metrics, e.g. QoS, energy consumption or environmental parameters
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1083 In-session procedures
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/403 Arrangements for multi-party communication, e.g. for conferences data switching systems for conference H04L12/18; arrangements for connecting several subscribers to a common circuit, i.e. affording conference facilities H04M3/56; television conferencing systems H04N7/15
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/80 Responding to QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/2227 Quality of service monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/567 Multimedia conference systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/006 Networks other than PSTN/ISDN providing telephone service, e.g. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) , including next generation networks with a packet-switched transport layer H04L65/00 takes precedence; aspects not specific to the type of network H04M3/00; special services in those networks H04M3/42
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/0072 Speech codec negotiation H04L65/1069 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/1275 Methods and means to improve the telephone service quality, e.g. reservation, prioritisation or admission control

Abstract

A conference call management method, system, and computer program product include inferring an Internet Protocol (IP) address of a new user requesting to join a call including at least one other user, inferring a codec to stream an emulated network pattern for the call if the new user were to join the call, measuring a call quality perceived by the at least one other user in the call while the emulated codec is run on the call, and measuring an impact on the call quality in a case that the new user joins the call based on the perceived call quality and the network pattern.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented conference call management method, the method comprising:

inferring an Internet Protocol (IP) address of a new user requesting to join a call including at least one other user;

inferring a codec to stream an emulated network pattern for the call in a case where the new user were to join the call, at a network level;

measuring a call quality perceived by the at least one other user in the call, at a user end, while the emulated codec is run on the call; and

measuring an impact on the call quality in a case that the new user joins the call based on the perceived call quality and the emulated network pattern.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

displaying the impact via a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for a moderator to decide whether to accept the new user to the call.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein a moderator selectively decides whether to accept the new user requesting to join the call based on the measured impact.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the codec includes a dummy packet streamed on the call such that the call quality does not change while the codec is streamed on the call.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the codec comprises a plurality of codecs each for a different type of access for the new user to the call,

wherein the different type of access comprises at least one of:

voice chat access-only;

listening capability-only;

video chat capability;

voice chat and listening capability; and

video stream watching capability-only.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 5, wherein each of the different type of access results in a different emulated network pattern that causes a different change to the measured call quality in the measuring, and

wherein a moderator selectively grants access to the new user for one of the different type of access based on the measured impact.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the inferring the codec infers a plurality of codecs each for a different new user requesting to join the call,

wherein the impact on the call quality is estimated in a case that the new user joins the call based on the perceived call quality and the emulated network pattern of the new user, and

wherein the estimating estimates the impact of each of the codecs on the call incrementally such that a moderator can accept or decline a number of the different users.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, embodied in a cloud-computing environment.

9. A non-transitory computer program product for conference call management, the computer program product comprising a computer-readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by a computer to cause the computer to perform:

inferring an Internet Protocol (IP) address of a new user requesting to join a call including at least one other user;

inferring a codec to stream an emulated network pattern for the call in a case where the new user were to join the call, at a network level;

measuring a call quality perceived by the at least one other user in the call, at a user end, while the emulated codec is run on the call; and

measuring an impact on the call quality in a case that the new user joins the call based on the perceived call quality and the emulated network pattern.

10. The non-transitory computer program product of claim 9, further comprising:

displaying the impact via a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for a moderator to decide whether to accept the new user to the call.

11. The non-transitory computer program product of claim 9, wherein a moderator selectively decides whether to accept the new user requesting to join the call based on the measured impact.

12. The non-transitory computer program product of claim 9, wherein the codec includes a dummy packet streamed on the call such that the call quality does not change while the codec is streamed on the call.

13. The non-transitory computer program product of claim 9, wherein the codec comprises a plurality of codecs each for a different type of access for the new user to the call,

wherein the different type of access comprises at least one of:

voice chat access-only;

listening capability-only;

video chat capability;

voice chat and listening capability; and

video stream watching capability-only.

14. The non-transitory computer program product of claim 13, wherein each of the different type of access results in a different network pattern that causes a different change to the measured call quality in the measuring, and

wherein a moderator selectively grants access to the new user for one of the different type of access based on the measured impact.

15. The non-transitory computer program product of claim 9, wherein the inferring the codec infers a plurality of codecs each for a different new user requesting to join the call,

wherein the impact on the call quality is estimated in a case that the new user joins the call based on the perceived call quality and the emulated network pattern of the new user, and

wherein the estimating estimates the impact of each of the codecs on the call incrementally such that a moderator can accept or decline a number of the different users.

16. A conference call management system, said system comprising:

a processor; and

a memory, the memory storing instructions to cause the processor to perform;

inferring an Internet Protocol (IP) address of a new user requesting to join a call including at least one other user;

inferring a codec to stream an emulated network pattern for the call in a case where the new user were to join the call, at a network level;

measuring a call quality perceived by the at least one other user in the call, at a user end, while the emulated codec is run on the call; and

measuring an impact on the call quality in a case that the new user joins the call based on the perceived call quality and the emulated network pattern.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the memory further stores instructions to cause the processor to perform:

displaying the impact via a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for a moderator to decide whether to accept the new user to the call.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein a moderator selectively decides whether to accept the new user requesting to join the call based on the measured impact.

19. The system of claim 16, wherein the codec includes a dummy packet streamed on the call such that the call quality does not change while the codec is streamed on the call.

20. The system of claim 16, embodied in a cloud-computing environment.