British Telecommunications Public Limited Company

British Telecommunications Corporation

Khalifa University

Emirates Telecommunications Corporation

Gilbert Kwame Owusu

Okung Ntofon

Carla Di Cairano-Gilfedder

Sid Shakya

Kin Poon

Beum Seuk Lee

Siddhartha Shakya

Dymitr Ruta

Kjeld Jensen

Hani Hagras

David Lesaint

Mathias Kern

Alistair McCormick

Anne Liret

Frederic Lardeux

George Anim-Ansah

Chris Voudouris

Anne Linet

Carla Di-Cairano-Gilfedder

Jonathan Malpass

Pierre Desport

Ahmed Mohamed

Chong Ming Chin

Botond Istvan Virginas

A data management process determines, from user-implemented provisional reservations () for data processing resources, a projected total capacity requirement for each said data processing resource, by maintaining a record () recording previous such reservations made by each user and comparing each reservations with records () of the actual resources used, to provide an estimate of resources required to meet the projected capacity requirement, and to provide data for a demand management processor (), which control associated configurable data processing equipment () to provide the resources required to meet the estimated capacity required. The process takes account of over- and under-ordering of capacity by comparing each reservation () with the use actually made (), and includes a record () of ad-hoc (unreserved) usage.

Network resource management

A method for deploying virtualized network functions (VNFs) as virtualized implementations of logical network devices in a virtualized computing environment for providing network services, the method including determining a VNF deployment plan including a specification, for each point in time over a planning period, of zero or more VNF instances to be released at the point in time and zero or more VNF instances to be deployed at the point in time, wherein the deployment plan is determined by an optimization function based on: a constraint on a number of VNFs in all states of undeployed, being deployed, deployed and being release; constraints based on a demand for VNFs defined by characteristics of the VNFs and the virtualized computing environment; and constraints based on a capacity of the virtualized computing environment to accommodate a resource consumption of the VNFs, and wherein the optimization function is configured to minimize one or more of: a number of VNFs in a deployed state; and a resource cost of deploying and releasing VNFs; and executing the VNF deployment plan to deploy VNFs for the virtualized computing environment.

Virtualized network function deployment

A method of dimensioning a link in a telecommunications network, and a device for implementing the method, the method including determining, for a first plurality of sets of traffic observations, wherein each set of the first plurality of sets includes a series of traffic observations each indicating the amount of traffic on a link within an observation interval of a particular duration for that set, a peak value of a traffic observation of the series of traffic observations within each set of the first plurality of sets and an average value of the series of traffic observations within each set of the first plurality of sets; calculating a first peak to average ratio for each observation interval duration based on the determined peak and average values within each set of the first plurality of sets; determining a goodness of fit value for a power function of the first peak to average ratio against its respective observation interval duration; selecting a dimensioning interval duration based on the determined goodness of fit value; and estimating a capacity of the link based on the selected dimensioning interval duration.

Telecommunications network

An optimum configuration of resources in a network function virtualisation data network is identified by assembling candidate configurations of resources (), each configuration being an arrangement of the resources into clusters selected such that each cluster provides one or more required services, () and assessing the candidate configurations (step) to identify an optimum configuration, the assessment of each configuration including measurement of latency () in physical links between the resources and, for each candidate configuration, determination of the total latency between the resources within each cluster of the configuration, for a predicted level and pattern of traffic associated with the required service to be operated by each cluster.

Network function virtualization

A method for designating a class of data content for determining how the content will be handled by a content delivery network (CDN) into one of: a transport designation by which content is transported from an entrance node to one or more edge nodes; a caching designation by which the content is stored at one or more edge nodes; and a hybrid designation by which content is stored at a node in the CDN for subsequent transport to one or more edge nodes in the CDN, the method comprising: determining a set of one or more transport designation options; determining a set of one or more caching designation options; determining a set of one or more hybrid designation options; determining a normalised measure resource requirement for each of the transport, caching and hybrid designation options; and selecting one designation option for the class of content from all of the transport, caching and hybrid designation options by an optimisation function for selecting the designation option based on the determined normalised resource requirement for each option.

Content designation for a content delivery network

As data processing requirements of individual client systems A to K change over time, they are allocated service from physical datacentres X, Y, Z according to the existing capabilities of the data centres requirements of the client systems, thus transferring client systems between cells controlled by individual data centres. This avoids the complex process of adapting the individual physical datacentres' capabilities to the changing requirements of the client systems to which they were originally allocated: thus the capabilities, and not the mappings, are maintained and the mappings, not the capabilities, are dynamic, so as to optimise the allocation of client systems to cells. It also minimises the number of clients having to work to more than one datacentre, which leads to delays in processing as the datacentres need to communicate with each other. Configuration of the datacentres X, Y, Z themselves is required to set up the system, but subsequently only if a re-optimization of the existing mappings cannot satisfy the changed demand profiles, for example because the overall balance of services available from the datacentres no longer matches the services required.

Resource allocation

This invention relates to methods and systems for monitoring mobile service quality in a mobile network and also for determining parts of a mobile network which need expansion or upgrade. Embodiments of the invention monitor the market impact and/or service quality, and determine an expansion ranking. The market impact, service quality and/or expansion ranking may view the network from a plurality of perspectives, including a location perspective, an historical time perspective, a future time perspective and/or a network element type perspective. The results of the monitoring and determining can be acted on by predetermined rules and/or actions to derive a list of prioritized expansion tasks for the network.

Methods and systems for monitoring mobile networks

Information received from disparate individual monitors that are concurrently measuring a predetermined property of a predetermined resource in a network are compared in a reliability computation engine to compute a metric of the degree of similarity between their measurements, and thus to determine a measure of the reliability of one or more of the individual monitors. This information can be used by a provisioning engine to select or reject individual resources for use in meeting service requirements on the basis of the reliability of the reports of their performance, as well as the reported performance itself. Monitors identified as unreliable can also be reported to a fault diagnosis function.

Evaluation of network conditions

The present invention provides a method which can be used to optimise the delivery of series over communications networks. Tasks which need to executed within a short timescale and those which are not due to be executed for a long time are excluded from the optimisation process. A score is determined, using fuzzy logic, for each task and its related resources and for each resource and its related tasks. This score is then used to determined which tasks should be optimised.

Scheduling tasks to resources for a network using fuzzy logic

In response to requests for their use of the resources by the applications, resources are first allocated to 'inelastic' requests specified for performance at a specific time slot. A baseline allocation of resources is then determined which is the minimum amount of capacity that has to be used for efficient operation of the resources required to meet the requests. This baseline will include some additional capacity as the minimum efficient capacity is less than the maximum capacity. 'Elastic' requests, specified for performance within a predetermined time range comprising two or more of the set of time slots, are then allocated so as to prioritize the use of this spare capacity, bringing actual usage up to at least the baseline allocation of resources. If further capacity is required to meet all the inelastic requests, further capacity is allocated and the baseline redefined to include it.

Networked resource provisioning system

A method for allocating resources of a group of resources to tasks of a group of tasks, the method comprising: forming a resource set comprising a resource record for each of the resources of the group of resources, each resource record having one or more fields representative of attributes of the respective resource; forming a task set comprising a task record for each of the tasks of the group of resources, each task record having one or more fields, each field holding data representative of an attribute of the respective task; condensing the task set by one or more iterations of the steps of: i. selecting two or more tasks of the task set; ii. adding to the task set an aggregate task record having one or more fields, each such field corresponding to a field of each of the task records of the selected tasks and holding data representative of the collective attributes of the task records of the selected tasks in those fields; and iii. removing the task records of the selected tasks from the task set; forming at least two mappings of some or all of the members of the resource set on to one or more members of the task set; calculating, for each of the mappings, a rating value dependent on the allocation of resources to the or each aggregate task in that mapping; comparing the rating values of the mappings; and selecting one of the mappings for further processing in dependence on the result of the said comparing step.

Growing community of inventors

Kesgrave, United Kingdom

Gilbert Kwame Owusu