Session initiation protocol routing using voice cookies

Abstract

A system and method for establishing a SIP session between calling and called end-points. A SIP server receives a SIP INVITE request for establishing the SIP session. The SIP INVITE request includes standard routing information in its header. The SIP server receives the SIP INVITE request and responds by transmitting to the calling end-point a HTML link associated with a web server. In rendering the contents of the HTML link, the calling end-point transmits an HTTP request to the web server including voice cookie information. The voice cookie information may include information gathered about the caller such as the caller profile information, transaction information, caller intent information, or recent and past history associated with a web site domain. The web server forwards the voice cookies to the SIP server. The SIP server determines an address of the called end-point as a function of the routing information in the SIP INVITE request and the voice cookie information. The call is then routed to the determined address along with the voice cookies or information derived from the voice cookies. New voice cookies may be written to the web server which transmits these to the calling end-point within an HTTP response.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION(S)[0001] This application claims the benefit of U.S. provisional application No. 60 / 281,885, filed Apr. 4, 2001, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.[0002] This invention relates generally to Internet telephony systems, and more particularly, to intelligent call routing in Internet telephony systems that adhere to session initiation protocol.BACKGROUND OF INVENTION[0003] Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling protocol for creating, modifying, and terminating multimedia sessions, including Internet telephone calls, with one or more SIP-endpoints. Details about the SIP signaling protocol is set forth in Internet Engineering Task Force Request for Comment 2543 entitled "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol," March 1999 (hereinafter referred to as RFC 2543), which is incorporated herein by reference. SIP provides an alternative to PBX- or H.323-signaled telephony.[0004] Although SIP end-points can directly place calls to ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0018] It should be appreciated, therefore, that the present invention allows a more intelligent determination of a callee address than when only using standard routing information. The additional information retrieved from the calling device yields a better understanding of the user's profile, habits, call intent and the like, for a better determination of a most appropriate callee to handle the call.

[0020] FIG. 1A is a functional block diagram of establishing a SIP call using a typical proxy SIP server;

Problems solved by technology

One limitation in current SIP call routing is the limited information on the caller's intent that may be deduced from the standard routing fields within the INVITE message headers.

Use of IVR systems to ascertain additional caller intent information is very cumbersome and inconvenient for the caller, and requires additional message exchanges and database lockups, which translate into slow call setup times.

However, such voice recognition systems are also cumbersome and inconvenient for the caller, subject to error, and also yield slow call setup times.

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