American Telephone & Telegraph Co., At&t Bell Laboratories

Rockwell Science Center, Inc.

William W Parker

Michael H Peters

Paul D Swardstrom

Paul D Hunter

Benjamin C Widrevitz

A periodic process timer is incorporated into a multi-tasking operating system of an automatic call distributor system. The process timing method includes the steps of: a) initializing a plurality of accumulator values corresponding to a single process of a plurality of processes, each accumulator value defined to represent a total processing time for each process; b) recording a starting value of a counter device; c) activating the counter device prior to execution of a selected process; d) permitting the selected process to execute; e) stopping the counter device after execution of the selected process; f) reading and ending value of the counter device; g) determining a difference value between the starting value and the ending value in the counter device; h) adding the difference value of the counter device to the accumulator value corresponding to the selected process; i) continuously repeating steps (b) through (h) until a predetermined amount of time has elapsed, to obtain a total accumulator value representing the total processing time for each selected process; and j) saving the accumulator values for each selected process.

Periodic process timer

A virtual PBX capability is provided to a group of user packet stations served by a packet switching system. The system establishes a virtual circuit between each distinct pair of stations in the group. The stations exchange signaling packets via the virtual circuits and respond to such packets by coordinating the initiation and disconnection of voice, data, or image calls. All call processing, including the provision of features such as call forwarding and automatic callback, is accomplished by the stations without the aid of the switching system. A fraud prevention mechanism is included in the switching system to prevent unauthorized stations from communicating as part of the virtual PBX group.

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Naperville, IL, United States of America

William W Parker