Lookahead interflow of traffic among a plurality of serving sites of one customer

• US 6,049,547 A
• Filed: 05/15/1997
• Issued: 04/11/2000
• Est. Priority Date: 05/15/1997
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Avaya Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Lucent Technologies, Inc. (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Greschler, Raechel, Foster, Sujeanne, Mathews, Eugene P., Flockhart, Andrew Derek, Fisher, Thomas S., Nalbone, Robert Daniel
• Primary Examiner(s): Ton, Dang
• Assistant Examiner(s): Ho, Tuan Q
• Application Number:
  US08/856,716
• Time in Patent Office: 1,062 Days
• Field of Search: 370/412, 370/413, 370/415, 370/416, 370/419, 370/420, 370/428, 370/429, 370/400, 370/418, 370/414, 370/417, 379/112, 379/223, 379/113, 379/266, 379/92.03, 379/92.04
• US Class Current: 370/412
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/5237 Interconnection arrangements between ACD systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/5238 with waiting time or load prediction arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13072 Sequence circuits for call signaling, ACD systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13164 Traffic (registration, measurement,...)
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13166 Fault prevention
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13204 Protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13205 Primary rate access, PRI
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13209 ISDN
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/1322 PBX
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13377 Recorded announcement
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 3/64 Distributing or queueing

Abstract

An arrangement for lookahead interflowing traffic among a plurality of serving sites of one customer. Incoming calls received at a site are queued if they cannot be served immediately. Queued calls are then examined periodically and if the call has not yet been served by a local agent and if the call is one of the oldest call in the queue, then the call is a candidate for lookahead interflow. A candidate for lookahead interflow causes a message to be sent to another switch requesting that the call be interflowed. If the other switch accepts the call, the call is routed to that other switch; if the other switch does not accept the interflowed call then the call remains in the queue of the requesting switch and is reexamined at the next period. All calls in the queue are completed to a local agent if a local agent is available.

Claims

1. Apparatus for serving incoming telecommunications traffic at a plurality of serving sites comprising:

means for receiving traffic at one of said serving sites;

means for interflowing traffic received at said one serving site to another serving site; and

means for deciding for which queued calls a look ahead interflow attempt to another serving site should be tried;

wherein said means for deciding for which queued call a look ahead interflow attempt will be tried will only consider attempting to overflow older queued calls in the queue of the interflowing service site;

wherein a look ahead interflow attempt comprises sending a query to a receiving site, receiving a response from the receiving site, and interflowing a call only if said response is an accept response.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, further characterized in that said means for deciding will only consider attempting interflow for the oldest queued call in the queue of the interflow service site.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, further characterized in that said means for deciding will refrain from considering attempting interflow for a queued call for which the expected wait time is less than a pre-determined threshold.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein a call for which a look ahead interflow attempt is attempted can be rejected by the target switch.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said means for deciding, comprises means for periodically examining each queued call, but attempting an interflow only if the queued called being examined is an older queued call.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said older queued calls comprise the oldest N queued calls wherein N is a predetermined parameter stored in the interflowing system.

7. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said older queued calls are limited to calls whose expected wait time is less than a predetermined parameter stored in the interflowing system.

8. A method of serving incoming telecommunication traffic from a plurality of serving sites comprising:

receiving traffic at one of said serving sites;

if said call cannot be immediately served by a local agent, queuing said call;

periodically examining each queued call as a candidate for a look ahead interflow attempt;

wherein said examining step comprises the step of attempting to interflow said call to another serving site only if said queued call is one of the older queued calls in the queue;

wherein a look ahead interflow attempt comprises sending a query to a receiving site, receiving a response from the receiving site, and interflowing a call only if said response is an accept response.