Multiple media fail-over to alternate media

• US 8,385,351 B1
• Filed: 06/16/2010
• Issued: 02/26/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 07/03/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property II LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property II LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Chen, Yihsiu, Foladare, Mark Jeffrey, Glazer, Samuel, Goldman, Shelly B., Kowalski, Thaddeus Julius
• Primary Examiner(s): Qureshi, Afsar
• Application Number:
  US12/802,870
• Time in Patent Office: 986 Days
• Field of Search: 370/395.21, 370216-3592, 709220-227
• US Class Current: 370/395.21
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/5692 Selection among different networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0668 by dynamic selection of recovery network elements, e.g. replacement by the most appropriate element after failure
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/122 by diverting traffic away from congested entities
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 11/062 using different frequency bands for speech and other data

Abstract

The present invention is a system and method for failing over from a current network access medium to an alternative network access medium. A customer premises equipment (CPE) box has ports for connections to a network through several network access media, such as high speed cable connections, DSL connections and dial-up connections. QoS parameters for each of the connections are monitored from a bandwidth manager remote from the CPE box. When it is determined that a fail-over would be beneficial, a message is sent from the bandwidth manager to the CPE box containing a command to fail-over and an identity of the alternate network access media.

Claims

1. A method for providing automatic fail-over service for premises equipment that is accessing a network via a first network access medium, the fail-over service providing fail-over from the first network access medium to a second network access medium, the method comprising:

at the premises equipment, responding to a first network ping received from a location remote from the premises equipment through the network and through the first network access medium;

at the premises equipment, responding to a second network ping received from the location remote from the premises equipment through the network and through the second network access medium;

at the premises equipment, receiving a message from the location remote from the premises equipment to change from accessing the network via the first network access medium to accessing the network via the second network access medium; and

at the premises equipment, in response to the message, changing from accessing the network via the first network access medium to accessing the network via the second network access medium.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the location remote from the premises equipment is an application server connected through the network to the premises equipment.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

at the location remote from the premises equipment, measuring current quality of service metrics of the first network access medium and the second network access medium.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the message is received from the remote location only if the quality of service metric of the second network access medium indicates a superior quality of service than the corresponding quality of service metric of the first network access medium.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the receiving is further contingent on obtaining historical quality of service metrics and comparing the current quality of service metrics to the historical quality of service metrics.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the first and second network access media are selected from a group consisting of a T1 service, a T3 service, a digital subscriber line, a hybrid fiber coaxial cable network and a standard telephone access line.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the first and second network access media is a plurality of baseband access media carrying a signal multiplexed among them.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

creating for use in a report a record of the message transmitted to the premises equipment.

9. A customer premises equipment box with automatic fail-over service between first and second network access media connections to a wide area network, comprising:

a first connection port connecting to the network via a first network access medium;

a second connection port connecting to the network via a second network access medium;

a processor and a tangible computer readable memory containing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the processor, perform the operations of;

transmitting a first ping response through the network and through the first network access medium, to a location remote from the customer premises equipment box;

transmitting a second ping response through the network and through the second network access medium, to the remote location;

receiving a command from the remote location to fail-over from the first network access medium to the second network access medium; and

in response to the command, failing over from the first network access medium to the second network access medium.

10. The customer premises equipment box of claim 9, wherein the location remote from the premises equipment is an application server connected through the network to the customer premises equipment box.

11. The customer premises equipment box of claim 9, wherein the first and second network access media are selected from a group consisting of a T1 service, a T3 service, a digital subscriber line, a hybrid fiber coaxial cable network and a standard telephone access line.

12. The customer premises equipment box of claim 9, wherein at least one of the first and second network access media is a plurality of baseband access media carrying a signal multiplexed among them.

13. The customer premises equipment box of claim 9, wherein the non-transitory computer-executable instructions are further for:

creating a record of the command received by the customer premises equipment box for use in a report database.

14. The customer premises equipment box of claim 9, wherein the non-transitory computer-executable instructions are further for:

maintaining the second network access medium in an active state.

15. The customer premises equipment box of claim 14, wherein the second connection is via dial-up modem and the instructions to maintain the second connection in an active state include instructions to redial the modem as necessary.

16. The customer premises equipment box of claim 9, further comprising a local area network connection for client computers.