System and Method for Providing Multimedia Services

• US 20080126541A1
• Filed: 11/06/2006
• Published: 05/29/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 02/07/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Inventors: Andreasen, Flemming S., Rosenberg, Jonathan D.
• Granted Patent: US 8,194,642 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/225
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1016 IP multimedia subsystem [IMS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1063 Application servers providing network services systems providing special services to telephonic subscribers H04M3/42
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1096 Supplementary features, e.g. call forwarding or call holding systems providing special services or facilities to telephony subscribers H04M3/42

Abstract

In certain embodiments, the present invention comprises a system and method for providing feature services in a multimedia communication environment. The system and method comprise comparing signaling messages with control data to identify one or more service enablers and application servers that are responsive to the signaling message. Each responsive service enabler is invoked in accordance with an associated policy hook.

Claims

1. A method for providing feature services in a multimedia communication environment, the method comprising:

receiving a signaling message, which can be a request or a response;

running one or more scripts to compare the signaling message with control data to identify one or more service enablers that are responsive to the signaling message; and

invoking each identified service enabler, wherein each identified service enabler operates in accordance with an associated policy hook.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the service enablers is a service capability interaction manager that may maintain dialog state and may be further responsive to the dialog state.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the control data is selected from the group consisting of:

a signaling message response value or response parameter value;

provisioned data;

dynamic data; and

data acquired from an operating environment of the scripts.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the scripts further identify one or more application servers that are responsive to the signaling message.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the control data is in an XML document format and XPath is used to enable comparison with one or more elements in the XML document.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the service enablers are selected from the group consisting of:

a user identity service enabler;

a registration service enabler;

a bearer interaction service enabler;

a privacy service enabler;

a request authorization service enabler;

a user data repository service enabler;

a presence service enabler;

a location service enabler;

a user security service enabler;

a SIP infrastructure security service enabler;

a service capability interaction manager service enabler;

a SIP compression service enabler;

a NAT and firewall traversal service enabler;

a request routing service enabler;

a voice-over-IP service peering enabler; and

an accounting service enabler.

7. A multimedia communication system comprising:

one or more service enablers;

a policy hook associated with each service enabler; and

a processing component operable to;

run one or more scripts to compare a signaling message with control data to identify one or more of the service enablers that are responsive to the signaling message; and

invoke each identified service enabler in accordance with the associated policy hook.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein at least one of the invoked service enablers is a service capabilities interaction manager which uses a user-specific script, and is operable to identify one or more other service enablers or application servers to provide user-specific multimedia communication features.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein at least one of the identified application servers inserts one or more tokens into the same or a second signaling message, the service capabilities interaction manager receives that signaling message from the application server, and the service capabilities interaction manager compares the token(s) to the control data to identify one or more of the application servers to provide user-specific multimedia communication features.

10. The system of claim 7, wherein each service enabler is identified by a token that may be changed without requiring software upgrades.

11. The system of claim 7, wherein the control data is selected from the group consisting of:

a signaling message response value or response parameter value;

provisioned data;

dynamic data;

data acquired from an external application; and

data acquired from an associated operating system.

12. The system of claim 7, wherein the control data is one or more elements selected from an extensible markup language (XML) document using XPath.

13. The system of claim 7, wherein the signaling message is associated with one or more media streams, and at least one of the service enablers is a bearer interaction management service enabler operable to associate an application identifier token with the signaling message and to associate a media stream identifier token with each media stream associated with the signaling message;

and further comprising;

sending the application identifier token and the media stream identifier token(s) to a policy server;

receiving one or more tokens from the policy server; and

providing the token(s) from the policy server to at least one of the service enablers where it can be used as input for further comparison with control data.

14. The system of claim 7, wherein the service enablers are selected from the group consisting of:

a user identity service enabler;

a registration service enabler;

a bearer interaction service enabler;

a privacy service enabler;

a request authorization service enabler;

a user data repository service enabler;

a presence service enabler;

a location service enabler;

a user security service enabler;

a SIP infrastructure security service enabler;

a service capability interaction manager service enabler;

a SIP compression service enabler;

a NAT and firewall traversal service enabler;

a request routing service enabler;

a voice-over-IP service peering enabler; and

an accounting service enabler.

15. Software for providing feature services in a multimedia environment, the software being embodied in a computer-readable medium comprising computer code such that when executed is operable to:

compare a signaling message with control data to identify one or more service enablers or application servers that are responsive to the signaling message; and

invoke each responsive service enabler in accordance with an associated policy hook.

16. The medium of claim 15, wherein at least one of the service enablers is a service capability interaction manager that may maintain dialog state associated with a user communication session and may invoke additional service enablers responsive to the dialog state.

17. The medium of claim 15, wherein each service enabler is identified by a token that may be changed without requiring software upgrades.

18. The medium of claim 15, wherein the control data is selected from the group consisting of:

a signaling message response value or response parameter value;

provisioned data;

dynamic data;

data acquired from an external application; and

data acquired from an associated operating system.

19. The medium of claim 15, wherein the service enablers are selected from the group consisting of:

a user identity service enabler;

a registration service enabler;

a bearer interaction service enabler;

a privacy service enabler;

a request authorization service enabler;

a user data repository service enabler;

a presence service enabler;

a location service enabler;

a user security service enabler;

a SIP infrastructure security service enabler;

a service capability interaction manager service enabler;

a SIP compression service enabler;

a NAT and firewall traversal service enabler;

a request routing service enabler;

a voice-over-IP service peering enabler; and

an accounting service enabler.

20. A system for providing feature services in a multimedia communication environment, the method comprising:

means for receiving a signaling message;

means for identifying one or more service enablers that are responsive to the signaling message;

means for invoking each responsive service enabler; and

means for controlling the operation of each service enabler through one or more associated policies.

21. The system of claim 20, further comprising means for maintaining dialog state, means for managing service capability interactions between the responsive service enablers, and means for invoking service enablers and application servers to provide user-specific multimedia communication features.

22. An application control point for use in a multimedia communication system, the application control point comprising:

a signaling protocol interface;

a programmable flow engine;

a rules engine;

one or more service enablers; and

one or more policy hooks associated with each service enabler;

wherein the rules engine is operable to match expressions in input data;

wherein the programmable flow engine is operable to process signaling messages received through the signaling protocol interface, to interact with the rules engine to compare the signaling messages with control data, and to interact with one or more service enablers or application servers to provide multimedia communication features responsive to the signaling messages; and

wherein the policy hooks are externally configurable and control the operation of the service enablers.

23. The application control point of claim 22, wherein at least one of the service enablers is a service capabilities interaction manager operable to process the signaling messages and the control data to identify one or more service enablers or application servers to provide user-specific multimedia communication features.

24. The application control point of claim 23, wherein an operation to match expressions is selected from the group consisting of:

a regular expression matching operation;

an XML document matching operation; and

an XPath based matching operation where XPath is used to select one or more elements from an XML document as input to the matching operation.

25. The application control point of claim 23, wherein the control data is selected from the group consisting of:

a signaling message response value or response parameter value;

dialog state information;

application server state information provided in the form of one or more tokens;

provisioned data;

dynamic data;

presence data;

time of day;

operating environment state information;

one or more tokens returned from a policy server; and

one or more tokens returned from one of the service enablers.

26. The application control point of claim 22, further comprising a policy server, and wherein at least one of the service enablers is a bearer interaction service enabler operable to identify an application descriptor associated with the signaling messages, to identify a media stream descriptor associated with each media stream in the signaling message, and to interact with the policy server and the service capabilities manager to provide user-specific multimedia communication features according to one or more policies stored in the policy server.

27. The application control point of claim 26, wherein the application descriptor and the media descriptor(s) are passed to the policy server and the policy server returns one or more tokens that are processed by one or more of the service enablers.

28. The application control point of claim 26, wherein the application descriptor and the media stream descriptor are constructed by a script that performs a syntactic computation on the signaling messages, and the script can be changed without requiring software upgrades.

29. The application control point of claim 28, wherein the syntactic computation is a regular expression match.

30. An access terminal for use in a multimedia communication system, the access terminal comprising:

a signaling protocol interface;

a programmable flow engine;

a rules engine;

one or more service enablers; and

one or more policy hooks associated with each service enabler;

wherein the rules engine is operable to match expressions in input data;

wherein the programmable flow engine is operable to process signaling messages received through the signaling protocol interface, to interact with the rules engine to compare the signaling messages with control data, and to interact with one or more service enablers to provide multimedia communication features responsive to the signaling messages; and

wherein the policy hooks are externally configurable and control the operation of the service enablers.

31. The access terminal of claim 30, wherein at least one of the service enablers is a service capabilities interaction manager operable to process the control data and user-specific signaling messages received through the signaling protocol interface to identify one or more service enablers, and to interact with the service enablers to provide user-specific multimedia communication features responsive to the signaling messages.

32. The access terminal of claim 30, further comprising one or more media enablers, and an externally configurable policy hook associated with each media enabler to control the operation of the media enablers.