The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 01, 2006
Filed:
Oct. 29, 2002
Sebastien Bouat, Crolles, FR;
Philippe Wieczorek, St. Ismier, FR;
Sebastien Bouat, Crolles, FR;
Philippe Wieczorek, St. Ismier, FR;
Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., Houston, TX (US);
Abstract
The present invention relates to a communication system and method and, more particularly, to a fault tolerant network element for providing fault tolerant call connections in the event of a failure of, for example, a Gatekeeper or other part of a network. Calls set up across a network consume large amounts of resources both throughout the network and at the devices which form the end points of the network. Therefore, even though a call connection may be supported, in the event of the failure of a network element, it is often the case that there is an ungraceful failure or use of resources throughout the network. Accordingly, an aspect of the present invention provides a method for preserving a connection context at a first layer of a communication protocol; the communication protocol comprising a second, higher, signalling layer in which, in response to a switch-over from an active host to a standby host in the event of failure of the former, the connection is terminated in response to receipt of a signalling layer signal other than a disconnect or terminate signal.