Patent · US Expired

Fault tolerant service-providing apparatus for use in a telecommunications network

US5910984A · kind A · utility

23Cited by
5References
26Claims
0Family size

Inventor

Key dates

Filing dateDec 6, 1995
Grant dateJun 8, 1999
Priority date
Expiry dateDec 6, 2015

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04Q2213/13565
  • WIPO fieldTelecommunications
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A telecommunications network architecture is known comprising a switching system for effecting basic call processing to set up, maintain and clear calls, and service-providing means (SPA) communicating with said switching system for providing services additional to said basic call processing. Due to the high availability requirements typically placed on telecommunications networks, the service providing means will generally need to be of a fault-tolerant design. A fault tolerant architecture is provided that relies on the checkpointing to a reliable store of state data for services currently being provided from first service logic of the service-providing means; should the first service logic fail, a second service logic is brought into operation and provided with required state data on current services from the backup store. To reduce the amount of checkpointing of data by the first logic, state data is only checkpointed when the corresponding call has reached a stable phase, the loss of a call during setup being much more acceptable than after it is been established.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.