Provisioning system and method for auto-discovering customer premises equipment in activating xDSL

• US 7,219,124 B2
• Filed: 08/01/2001
• Issued: 05/15/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 08/01/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Qwest Communications International Incorporated (Lumen Technologies, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Qwest Communications International Incorporated (Lumen Technologies, Inc.)
• Inventors: Cerami, Richard, Storaasli, Roxanna, Figueroa, Timothy
• Primary Examiner(s): Najjar; Saleh
• Assistant Examiner(s): ISMAIL, SHAWKI SAIF
• Application Number:
  US09/921,285
• Publication Number:
  US 20020071440A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,113 Days
• Field of Search: 370/351, 370/404, 370/401, 370/304, 370/431, 709/249, 709/250, 709/238, 709/203, 709/217, 709/219, 709/220, 709222-226
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/66 Arrangements for connecting between networks having differing types of switching systems, e.g. gateways
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/06 Management of faults, events, alarms or notifications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0631 using root cause analysis; using analysis of correlation between notifications, alarms or events based on decision criteria, e.g. hierarchy, tree or time analysis
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0654 using network fault recovery ring fault isolation or reconfiguration in loop networks without recovery actions by a network management system H04L12/437
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0896 Bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities flow or congestion control using dynamic resource allocation, e.g. in-call renegotiation, H04L47/76
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/12 Discovery or management of network topologies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/32 Specific management aspects for broadband networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/40 using virtualisation of network functions or resources, e.g. SDN or NFV entities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5003 Managing SLA; Interaction between SLA and QoS
• 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 41/5025 by proactively reacting to service quality change, e.g. by reconfiguration after service quality degradation or upgrade
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5032 Generating service level reports
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5061 characterised by the interaction between service providers and their network customers, e.g. customer relationship management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5067 Customer-centric QoS measurements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/507 Filtering out customers affected by service problems
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5074 Handling of user complaints or trouble tickets
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/509 wherein the managed service relates to media content delivery, e.g. audio, video or TV
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/00 Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0811 by checking connectivity
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0817 : by checking functioning
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0823 : Errors, e.g. transmission errors
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0882 : Utilisation of link capacity
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/091 : Measuring contribution of individual network components to actual service level
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/10 : Active monitoring, e.g. heartbeat, ping or trace-route
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/16 : Threshold monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/20 : the monitoring system or the monitored elements being virtualised, abstracted or software-defined entities, e.g. SDN or NFV
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/50 : Testing arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/40 : for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity, e.g. service redundancy protocols, protocol state redundancy or protocol service redirection management of faults, events, alarms or notifications in data switching networks H04L41/06
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 11/062 : using different frequency bands for speech and other data
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6125 : involving transmission via Internet transmission by internet of broadcast information H04H60/82
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6473 : Monitoring network processes errors for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/64738 : Monitoring network characteristics, e.g. bandwidth, congestion level data switched network analysis H04L41/14; monitoring functioning in data switched networks H04L43/0817; flow control in packet networks H04L47/10
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99931 : Database or file accessing

Abstract

The present invention provides for provisioning broadband services using a VDSL-based communication network. The present invention includes a system architecture and method for automatically activating VDSL service by self-discovering customer premises equipment, such as a residential gateway, by determining the loop associated with a user and the subscribed content to be delivered to the user.

Claims

1. A method for activating service in a VDSL-based broadband communication network, the network comprising a plurality of loops where each loop includes a source terminus and a destination terminus, wherein each of the source termini are coupled to a computer system, wherein the computer system is coupled to a database having a data structure to store data, the method comprising:

receiving a service request for content from a user;

assigning at least one of the plurality of loops to the user;

storing a service record for content requested by a user in the database, the service record including information for at least one of the plurality of loops, the information including loop component information specific to the user;

detecting a coupling of a user device to the destination terminus of the at least one loop;

detecting an address associated with the coupled user device, the address not being stored in the service record;

determining a path associated with the coupled user device;

the path including discovered loop component information;

matching the discovered loop component information with the loop component information specific to the user that is stored in the service record in the database; and

providing the requested content via the determined path using the address associated with the user device upon matching the discovered loop component information with the loop component information specific to the user.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing subscribed content via the at least one loop to the user device substantially upon matching the path with the subscribed content.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein associating the user comprises storing content information in the database, where the content information is data representing a user'"'"'s subscribed content.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the subscribed content is video.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein assigning the at least one loop comprises storing transport information in the database, where the transport information is data representing at least one of the plurality of loops.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the transport is configured to operate in accordance with asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) based protocol.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the loop component information specific to the user includes a port identifier associated with a port or a card identifier associated with a card.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein coupling a user device further comprises coupling a customer premises equipment to the destination terminus of the at least one loop.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the customer premises equipment is a residential gateway.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the path includes determining a virtual path connection associated with the user device.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the address includes determining a Media Access Control Identifier (MAC ID).

12. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the path includes further determining a user device type associated with the user device.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein matching the determined loop component information comprises:

associating the determined loop component information with the at least one loop;

identifying the user assigned to the at least one loop; and

retrieving content subscribed by the user from the content database to provide to the user via a VDSL loop.

17. The method of claim 1, further comprising programming a second address into the memory of the user device.

14. A method for activating service in a VDSL-based broadband communication network, the network comprising a plurality of loops where each loop is coupled from a VDSL provider office to a customer location, wherein each of the plurality of loops have a first loop end and a second loop end, wherein the first loop end is coupled to a computer system at the VDSL provider office, wherein the computer system is coupled to a content database and a network services database, the method comprising:

associating content subscribed by a user to the user by storing content information in the database, where the content information is data representing a user'"'"'s subscribed content and is associated with the user;

assigning to the user a port and a card associated with at least one of the plurality of loops and associating the port and card with the content subscribed to by the user;

detecting a coupling of a residential gateway to the second loop end at the customer location of the at least one loop;

detecting an address associated with the residential gateway, the address not being stored in a database;

determining the port and the card associated with the coupled residential gateway;

matching the determined port and the card with the port and card associated with the content subscribed to by the user; and

providing subscribed content via the at least one loop to the residential gateway substantially upon matching the determined port and the card with the port and card associated with the content subscribed to by the user.

15. A method for activating service in a video and data broadband communication network, the method comprising

receiving a service request for content from a user;

assigning a network transport to the user;

storing a service record for content requested by a user in the database, the service record including information for the provisioned network transport, the information including assigned network component information specific to the user;

detecting a coupling of a user device to the network transport;

detecting an address associated with the coupled user device, the address not being stored in a database;

determining a path associated with the coupled user device, the path including discovered network component information;

matching the discovered network component information with the assigned network component information specific to the user that is stored in the service record in the database; and

providing the requested content via the determined path associated with the user device upon matching the discovered network component information with the network component information specific to the user, wherein the assigning of the network transport is performed before detecting the coupling of the user device and the providing of the requested content is performed alter detecting the coupling of the user device.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

using the address to provide the requested content.