METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR REAL-TIME COLLECTION OF INFORMATION ABOUT APPLICATION LEVEL ACTIVITY AND OTHER USER INFORMATION ON A MOBILE DATA NETWORK

• US 20090138447A1
• Filed: 11/26/2008
• Published: 05/28/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 11/27/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ribbon Communications Securities Corp. (Ribbon Communications, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Umber Systems Incorporated (Ribbon Communications, Inc.)
• Inventors: KALAVADE, Asawaree
• Granted Patent: US 8,935,381 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0637 Strategic management or analysis, e.g. setting a goal or target of an organisation; Planning actions based on goals; Analysis or evaluation of effectiveness of goals
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0205 Location or geographical consideration
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0261 based on user location
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0213 Standardised network management protocols, e.g. simple network management protocol [SNMP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/065 related to network devices
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/08 Monitoring or testing based on specific metrics, e.g. QoS, energy consumption or environmental parameters
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0876 Network utilisation, e.g. volume of load or congestion level
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/12 Network monitoring probes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/08 Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/029 Location-based management or tracking services
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/18 Information format or content conversion, e.g. adaptation by the network of the transmitted or received information for the purpose of wireless delivery to users or terminals

Abstract

Method and apparatus for real-time collection of information about application level activity and other user information on a mobile data network. A collector device communicates with a router in a mobile data network so that the collector can obtain substantially all of the data coming from the router in real-time and correlate the data to specific users. The collector device comprises a user identity subsystem, filter, and data transfer subsystem. The user identity subsystem inspects the data for source IP addresses and correlates them to corresponding mobile phone numbers. The filter then inspects the collected data and retains only application-level data. Lastly, the data transfer subsystem transfers the filtered data to a data reporting and analysis system.

Claims

1. A collector device for real-time, transparent monitoring of application-level data activity on a mobile data network so that the activity may correlated to specific users or aggregated and then reported, the collector device being in communication with a corresponding mobile data network router so that the collector receives substantially all of the data communications from the router and the collector device comprising:

a user identity subsystem for correlating phone numbers associated with user mobile devices with IP addresses, wherein said user identity subsystem modifies the correlation of phone numbers to IP addresses in response to the detection of new IP address assignments for the corresponding phone number;

a filter to inspect and analyze data communications from the router to detect application-level data level activity, said inspection and analysis being in accordance with specified criteria;

a data transfer subsystem for transferring information about the detected and correlated data activity to a data reporting and analysis system.

2. The collector device of claim 1 wherein the collector is connected to a mobile data network router at a physical segment before communications have been received by any subsequent gateway or proxy.

3. The collector of claim 2 wherein a layer 2 tap is used to split a physical segment connected to an output of the router and to provide said data communications to said collector device.

4. The collector device of claim 1 wherein a layer 7 switch is used to provide data communication to the collector device.

5. The collector device of claim 1 wherein the collector is connected to a port mirror of said router.

6. The collector device of claim 1 wherein said user identity subsystem monitors RADIUS communications within at least a portion of the mobile data network to associate IP addresses with mobile phone numbers.

7. The collector device of claim 6 wherein the identity subsystem detects new session request messages to identify new IP addresses and detects specific network messages to determine corresponding mobile phone numbers.

8. The collector device of claim 1 wherein said filter inspects packetized data on said network to detect layer 7 protocols used by each packet, said protocols including at least one of HTTP, WAP, RTSP, and SMPP.

9. The collector device of claim 1 further including a user location subsystem for using the IP address and phone number to determine and monitor the physical location of each user.

10. The collector device of claim 1 further including a user demographics module to determine demographic information by using at least one of the IP address and phone number to capture information from a carrier for the mobile data network.

11. The collector device of claim 10 wherein the demographic information includes information about the user.

12. The collector device of claim 10 wherein the demographic information includes information about the user device.

13. The collector device of claim 1 further including logic to collect out-of-band information including at least one of log files from the mobile data network, client-generated data, subscriber data, SMSC data.

14. The collector device of claim 1 further including logic to detect whether application-level data is an advertisement including an image.