At&t Intellectual Property I, L.p.

At+t Corp.

Other

At&t - Brendzel

Marius Jonas Gudelis

Ali M Cherchali

James C Ehlinger

Robert J McLaughlin

Christopher P Gilboy

William G Lester

Gagan Choudhury

Kaustubh Joshi

Israel L Means

Satyendra S Tripathi

Praveen Ramadenu

Shobhna Goyal

Manikka Thyagarajan

Ganeshkumar Natarajan

Michael L Hammer

Thomas Joseph Killian

Norman Loren Schryer

Steven M Michelson

Paul James Fellingham

Barry S Seip

Gerald Ezrol

Jerry A Leger

James Yatsko

Jane E Cockrell

Ali Cherchali

Robert J Mclaughlin

The concepts and technologies disclosed herein provide high availability and high utilization cloud data center architecture for supporting telecommunications services. According to one aspect of the concepts and technologies disclosed herein, a 4-site model of application placement within the cloud computing environment provides 37.5% resource utilization with site availability of five 9s (99.999%) and virtual machine availability of five 9s. According to another aspect of the concepts and technologies disclosed herein, a 3-site model of application placement within the cloud computing environment provides 66% resource utilization with site availability of five 9s and virtual machine availability of five 9s. According to another aspect of the concepts and technologies disclosed herein, a 4-site model of application placement within the cloud computing environment provides 75% resource utilization with site availability of five 9s and virtual machine availability of five 9s.

High availability and high utilization cloud data center architecture for supporting telecommunications services

In an arrangement where the device that is known to an ISP is communicating with the ISP through an interposed device that is not known to the ISP, the interposed device captures the known device's MAC address upon startup and clones the captured MAC address in all standard packets that it sends to the ISP.

Technique for automated MAC address cloning

A network is defined with several alternative softswitches/proxies, which may be used for communication. Each softswitch/proxy has a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address. The softswitches/proxies receive configuration data from a centralized user-profile server, which maintains user-profile information. A centralized call-detail record (CDR) server is connected to each softswitch/proxy and maintains CDRs on each user on each softswitch/proxy. Based on the network configuration, an end-device configuration system generates a provisioning file. The provisioning file includes the IP addresses of each softswitch/proxy. The provisioning file is communicated to user devices. Each user device accesses the provisioning file and uses the IP address for communication. Should the communication fail for any reason, the user device may autonomously access the provisioning file and initiate another call using the next IP address in the provisioning file.

Method and apparatus for implementing a high-reliability load balanced easily upgradeable packet technology

A network is defined with several alternative softswitches/proxies, which may be used for communication. Each softswitch/proxy has a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address. The softswitches/proxies receive configuration data from a centralized user-profile server, which maintains user-profile information. A centralized call-detail record (CDR) server also is connected to each softswitch/proxy and maintains CDRs on each user on each softswitch/proxy. Based on the network configuration, an end-device configuration system generates a provisioning file. The provisioning file includes the IP addresses of each softswitch/proxy. The provisioning file is communicated to user devices. Each user device accesses the provisioning file and uses the IP address for communication. Should the communication fail for any reason, the user device may autonomously access the provisioning file and initiate another call using the next IP address in the provisioning file. This process may continue until a call is completed.

An improved telephony adapter compresses voice data, creates IP packets, and prioritizes the voice IP packets over the data IP packets. Preferably, the compression and packetization interval is such that the bandwidth occupied by the voice IP packets is approximately half of the minimum average available bandwidth in the upstream direction, thereby maintaining acceptable latency and voice quality of the speech. Further enhancement is achieved by causing the ISP to also give priority to voice packets that are destined to the telephony adapter, over the data packets that are destined to the telephony adapter.

Enhancing voice QoS over unmanaged bandwidth limited packet network

A terminal adapter for guaranteeing the quality of service of both voice and data packets is disclosed. When a data packet is received in a first data input queue of a terminal adapter, a determination is made whether a voice packet is present in a voice input queue. Another determination is made as to whether the sum of the size of the data packet and the size of all packets in a terminal adapter output queue would exceed a first size threshold established for the output queue. If voice packets are present in the voice input queue, or if the aforementioned sum exceeds the size threshold, the data packet is not forwarded to the output queue. If no voice packets are present in the voice input queue and if the aforementioned sum is below the first size threshold, then the data packet is forwarded to the output queue.

Method and apparatus for controlling the quality of service of voice and data services over variable bandwidth access networks

When an entity (such as a customer using a communication device. . . ) attempts to communicate with a target (such as an employee), an arrangement indicates to the customer, 'status' information describing at least the employee's present and future ability to communicate with the entity (such as by returning his call). At least one sensing device-is configured to provide sensing information concerning the target employee's status in response to an action of the target employee with respect to the sensing device. A monitoring serveris configured to receive the sensing information and to govern communication to the entity (customer) of the target's 'status.' In one implementation, a particular sensing device (such as a cash register, computer terminal, or time clock) is configured to perform both (A) a primary function that is not related to providing the sensing information, and (B) the secondary function of providing the sensing information. In this implementation, the particular sensing device provides the sensing information in response to the person's ordinary use of the particular sensing device as he goes about his job (performing the particular sensing device's primary function), so that the person does not have to explicitly perform any purely presence-related action in order to cause the particular sensing device to communicate the sensing information.

Arrangement for indicating presence of individual

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls received in a Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC) network () maintained by a provider of HFC VoIP telephony services are advantageously translated into a Time-Division Multiplex (TDM) format by an Internet Protocol Device Terminal (IPDT) () in the HFC network. Once translated into a TDM format, the call passes to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) () for call processing to afford the call features subscribed to by the called party, such as caller-ID and call waiting. Once processed, the PSTN routes the call to the destination. Likewise, a call destined for an HFC VoIP customer can be processed within the PSTN to afford the call features subscribed to by the HFC VoIP customer. In this way, the HFC VoIP telephony service can offer full-featured VoIP cable telephony without the need to perform call processing in its own network.

Technique for providing translation between the packet environment and the PSTN environment

A system and method for delivering interactive voice messages using a voice messaging system are disclosed. In an illustrative embodiment, the system comprises a voice messaging processor and memory containing machine readable instructions which, when executed by the processor, enable the voice messaging system to: receive an inbound call from a sender; record an interactive voice message from the sender directed to at least one recipient; receive a voice message retrieval request from a recipient; play the interactive voice message for the recipient; and initiate an interactive session with the recipient to elicit responses from the recipient regarding the interactive voice message. In one aspect of the invention, an application server is provided for generating interactive voicemails and placing the inbound call from the sender to the voice messaging processor.

Method and apparatus for interactive voicemail

A terminal adapter for guaranteeing the quality of service of both voice and data packets is disclosed. Such quality is ensured by inserting gaps between successive data packets in a stream of multiplexed data and/or voice packets. A gap after a particular data packet is proportional to the size of that particular data packet. In this way, bandwidth is preserved for any voice packets that may have arrived during the transfer of the data packet as well as for any voice packets that arrive during the gap. The unconstrained upstream data bandwidth and the bandwidth used by voice calls may each be estimated by taking a plurality of instantaneous measurements of the available bandwidth and/or taking individual direct measurements. The size of data packets may be limited to a maximum size in order to ensure that time-sensitive voice packets experience only an acceptable delay in queue for transmission.

Growing community of inventors

Holmdel, NJ, United States of America

Marius Jonas Gudelis