Traffic measuring device based on state transitions
First Claim
1. In a traffic measuring system a device enabling the continuous measurement of average server occupancy, often referred to as the traffic, over a measurement interval which may also be referred to as a measurement period, defined as beginning when all monitored servers have simultaneously become occupied, said condition also termed a server congestion state, and ending at any desired time when traffic observations are made, utilizing seize pulses, each of which indicates that a server has become occupied, all servers busy pulses also referred to herein as congestion pulses, each of which indicates that a congestion state has been reached, and release pulses, each of which indicates that a server has been released from use to measure traffic on a group of servers without requiring the scanning of individual servers, and thereby reducing the required number of measuring leads to measure traffic usage, comprising:
- an up/down counting means including a first input means driven by said server seize pulses for incrementing count of said up/down counting means, a second input means driven by said server release pulses for decrementing count of said up/down counting means, and a third input means driven by said all servers occupied pulses for enabling count of said up/down counting means to be preset to a predetermined value, and count output means for indicating counting state of said up/down counting means;
an accumulating means, which continuously records and updates a non-normalized value of average server occupancy expressed mathematically as Σ
Xk dk, where Xk is the server occupancy state at the kth instant of time and dk is a measure of the duration of said occupancy state during said measurement interval, including a data input means, a data output means, and an accumulate enable input means for triggering accumulation of data present at said data input means;
a clock means, producing a uniform pulse train;
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Abstract
The invention described herein is a traffic measurement device, particularly applicable to telecommunication networks. The device is of the digital type and relies on state transitions caused by the origination and termination of calls. This type of measurement is not vulnerable to inaccuracies of traditional measuring systems, particularly those using scanning methods.
The device requires, theoretically, only three measuring leads common to all servers in the group under consideration, irrespective of the number of servers; one lead transmits a pulse at the time of seizure of a server, the other transmits a pulse at the time of release of a server, and the third transmits a pulse when all servers are busy. The last pulse is used for system initialization and for measurement of congestion.
The basic device integrates the server occupancy states over time by adding the number of scored busy servers in each state a number of times proportional to the duration of the state. The device also facilitates measurement of the variance of the carried traffic or load, which is required together with the mean to describe the characteristics of the traffic distribution such as peakedness or smoothness. Finally, by measuring the duration of congestion and noncongestion periods the device calculates the overflow and offered traffic.
28 Citations
19 Claims
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1. In a traffic measuring system a device enabling the continuous measurement of average server occupancy, often referred to as the traffic, over a measurement interval which may also be referred to as a measurement period, defined as beginning when all monitored servers have simultaneously become occupied, said condition also termed a server congestion state, and ending at any desired time when traffic observations are made, utilizing seize pulses, each of which indicates that a server has become occupied, all servers busy pulses also referred to herein as congestion pulses, each of which indicates that a congestion state has been reached, and release pulses, each of which indicates that a server has been released from use to measure traffic on a group of servers without requiring the scanning of individual servers, and thereby reducing the required number of measuring leads to measure traffic usage, comprising:
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an up/down counting means including a first input means driven by said server seize pulses for incrementing count of said up/down counting means, a second input means driven by said server release pulses for decrementing count of said up/down counting means, and a third input means driven by said all servers occupied pulses for enabling count of said up/down counting means to be preset to a predetermined value, and count output means for indicating counting state of said up/down counting means; an accumulating means, which continuously records and updates a non-normalized value of average server occupancy expressed mathematically as Σ
Xk dk, where Xk is the server occupancy state at the kth instant of time and dk is a measure of the duration of said occupancy state during said measurement interval, including a data input means, a data output means, and an accumulate enable input means for triggering accumulation of data present at said data input means;a clock means, producing a uniform pulse train; - View Dependent Claims (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13)
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2. connecting means between said count output means of said up/down counting means and said data input means of said accumulating means;
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a connecting means between output of said clock means and accumulate enable input means of said accumulating means allowing accumulation of values scored in said up/down counting means at every clock pulse during said measurement interval, so that each state scored in said up/down counting means is added in said accumulating means a number of times proportional to duration of said state.
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10. A traffic measuring device for continuously integrating the function describing server occupancy states of a group of servers over a measurement period defined as beginning when all servers have been simultaneously occupied and ending at the time of traffic observation to yield the traffic carried by said servers and for dividing said integrated result by the duration of time that said servers are not all occupied to yield the traffic offered to said group of servers, utilizing pulses produced when any server in said group becomes occupied, pulses produced when any server in said group becomes idle and pulses produced when all servers in said group become occupied, comprising;
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an up/down counter means including a count increment means which is connected to a first pulse input source where pulses are produced by server seizure, a count decrement means which is connected to a second pulse input source where pulses are produced by server release, and a preset enable means which is connected to a third pulse input source where pulses are produced when all servers are occupied, and a count output means; an accumulator means including a data input means, an accumulate enable input means for triggering accumulation of data present at said data input means, and a data output means; a clock means producing a pulse train to drive said accumulate enable input means; a comparator means including a first and a second data input means and a logic output means for providing a logic level to indicate whether said up/down counter count output is equal to number of servers in group being measured; a timing counter means, including a count increment input means and count output means, which counts the number of clock pulses during the server noncongestion periods when at least one server is unoccupied over said measurement period; a control gating means, including first and second input means and output means for allowing pulses from clock means to be applied to said timing counter means during periods of server noncongestion; a dividing means including a divisor data input means, a dividend data input means and a quotient data output means for dividing said data output of said accumulator means by count output of said timing counter means; connecting means between said count output means of said up/down counter means and said data input means of said accumulator means; a connecting means between said clock means and said accumulate enable means to cause accumulation of sum of each value scored in up/down counting means a repeated number of times proportional to the duration that said value is present in said up/down counting means; a connecting means between said clock means and first input of said gating means; a connecting means between said output means of said up/down counter means and said first data input means of said comparator means; a connecting means between said second data input means of said comparator means and data source equivalent to number of servers being measured; connecting means between said logic output of said comparator means and said second input means of said control gating means providing a logic level indicating whether count stored in said up/down counter is equal to number of servers being measured; a connecting means between output of said control gating means and said timing counter count increment input means; connecting means between output means of said timing counting means and divisor data input means of said dividing means; and connecting means between said data output means of said accumulator means and said dividend data input means of said dividing means, where the result obtained may be referred to as the offered traffic and can be expressed mathematically as ##EQU12## where N is the number of up/down counter transition states over the period of meansurement, M is the number of clock pulses generated during said noncongestion periods, Δ
t is the clock pulse duration, xk is the number of servers occupied in the kth state, and nk is the number of clock pulses generated during the kth transition state.
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12. In a traffic measuring system a device enabling the continuous measurement of traffic carried by a group of servers over a measurement period defined as beginning when all servers are simultaneously occupied and ending when traffic observations are made by adding server release times and subtracting server seizure times from an accumulated total of said times, and by compensating for servers occupied at the start and end of said measurement period, comprising:
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a clock means providing a uniform train of pulses driving count input of a timing counting means which monitors elapsed measurement time during said measurement period, said timing counting means including output means; an adder/subtractor accumulating means which either adds or subtracts the contents of said timing counting means from its accumulated total, including a data input means, an add enable input means, a subtract enable input means and a data output means for adding contents of said timing counting means at data input means to its accumulated total when a pulse is present at said add enable input means and for subtracting contents of said timing counting means at data input means from said accumulated total when a pulse is present at said subtract enable input means; connecting means between said timing counting means and said data input means of said adder/subtractor accumulating means to allow times of server seizure to be subtracted from said accumulated total and time of server release to be added to said accumulated total; a connecting means between said add enable input means of said adder/subtractor accumulating means and a pulse source producing pulses upon server release; and a connecting means between said subtract enable input means of said adder/subtractor accumulating means and a pulse source producing pulses upon server seizure, where the result retained in said adder/subtractor accumulating means can be expressed mathematically as ##EQU13## where ti is the time of server release for the ith release during said measurement period, Sj is the time of server seizure for the jth seizure during said measurement period, A is the total number of server releases and B is the total number of server seizures during said measurement period. - View Dependent Claims (14, 16, 17, 18)
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15. A traffic measuring device enabling the continuous measurement of the combined average server occupancy on a plurality of separately monitored server subgroupings over a measurement interval, also termed the measurement period, defined as beginning after servers in each separate server subgroup which have been separately observed become simultaneously occupied and ending at the desired time of traffic observation, utilizing from each of said server subgroupings server seize pulses, each of which indicates that a server has become occupied, server release pulses, each of which indicates that a server has become unoccupied and server congestion pulses, each of which indicates that all servers in a server subgrouping have become occupied, comprising:
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a plurality of up/down counting means, each of which monitors the occupancy state of one of said server subgroupings and each of which includes a first input means driven by said seize pulses from said server subgrouping for incrementing count of said up/down counting means, a second input means driven by said release pulses from said server subgrouping for decrementing count of said up/down counting means, a third input means driven by said server congestion pulses from said server subgrouping for enabling the count of said up/down counting means to be preset at a predetermined value, and count output means for indicating counting state of said up/down counting means; an adding means with a plurality of addend input means and a data output means for adding values scored in each of said up/down counting means; connecting means between each of said count output means and said addend input means to allow addition of values scored in said separate up/down counting means; a clock means producing a uniform pulse train; an accumulating means which records and updates a nonnormalized value of the combined average server occupancy, expressed mathematically as Σ
xk dk, where xk is the instantaneous total number of occupied servers in all subgroupings and dk is a measure of the duration of said occupancy state, including a data input means, a data output means, an accumulate enable input means for triggering accumulation of data present at said data input means, and a reset means which is manually activated after all said subgroups have been observed to experience congestion, said condition indicated when a server congestion pulse has been monitored from each of said server subgroups, where said accumulator activation starts said measurement interval;connecting means between said data output means of said adding means and said data input means of said accumulating means; a connecting means between output of said clock means and accumulate enable input means of said accumulating means allowing accumulation of values scored in said adding means at every clock pulse during said measurement interval so that each state scored in said adding means is added in said accumulating means a number of times proportional to duration of said state.
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19. In a traffic measuring system, a device enabling the continuous measurement of the combined server occupancy on a plurality of separately monitored server subgroupings, with only three measuring leads required from each server subgrouping, over a measurement interval, also termed the measurement period, defined as beginning after servers in each separate server subgroup which have been separately observed become simultaneously occupied and ending at the desired time of observation, utilizing from each of said server subgroupings server seize pulses, each of which indicates that a server has become occupied, server release pulses, each of which indicates that a server has become unoccupied and server congestion pulses, each of which indicates that all servers in a server subgrouping have become occupied, comprising:
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a plurality of up/down counting means, each of which monitors the occupancy state of one of said server subgroupings and each of which includes a first input means driven by said seize pulses from said server subgrouping for incrementing count of said up/down counting means, a second input means driven by said release pulses from said server subgrouping for decrementing count of said up/down counting means, and a third input means driven by said server congestion pulses from said server subgrouping for enabling the count of said up/down counting means to be present at a predetermined value, and count output means for indicating counting state of said up/down counting means; an adding means with a plurality of addend input means and a data output means for adding values scored in each of said up/down counting means; and connecting means between each of said count output means and said addend input means to allow addition of values scored in said separate up/down counting means; where the total instantaneus occupancy state of all server subgroupings is scored in said adding means and is determined without requiring the separate observation and scanning of each of said servers in said subgroupings.
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Specification