At&t Intellectual Property I, L.p.

International Business Machines Corporation

Jean-Francois Pennec

Guy Euget

Patrick Michel

Alain Benayoun

Claude Pin

A method and apparatus for provisioning a physical link to a service provider is disclosed whereby physical link information in a carrier network is store, in one embodiment, in a database within the carrier network or, in another embodiment, in a database shared by a carrier and a service provider. In response to a request from the service provider for the use of the physical link, physical link information and network management information associated is retrieved from that database. In one embodiment, this information is sent directly from the carrier via in-band signaling. In another embodiment, the information is retrieved from the shared database and is transmitted via out-of-band signaling. In accordance with yet another embodiment, messages exchanged between service providers and carriers comprise digital certificates that are used to verify the identity of the providers and carriers.

Method and apparatus for the ordering of carrier links

A hardware device for processing the tasks of an algorithm of the type having a number of processes the execution of some of which depend on binary decisions has a plurality of task units (), each of which are associated with a task defined as being either one process or one decision or one process together with a following decision. A task interconnection logic block () is connected to each task unit for communicating actions from a source task unit to a destination task unit. Each task unit includes a processor () for processing the steps of the associated task when a received action requests such a processing. A status manager () handles actions coming from other task units and builds actions to be sent to other task units.

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Nice, France

Jean-Francois Pennec