554 results about "Signaling network" patented technology

The present invention describes a system and method for communicating voice and data over a packet-switched network that is adapted to coexist and communicate with a legacy PSTN. The system permits packet switching of voice calls and data calls through a data network from and to any of a LEC, a customer facility or a direct IP connection on the data network. The system includes soft switch sites, gateway sites, a data network, a provisioning component, a network event component and a network management component. The system interfaces with customer facilities (e.g., a PBX), carrier facilities (e.g., a LEC) and legacy signaling networks (e.g., SS7) to handle calls between any combination of on-network and off-network callers. The soft switch sites provide the core call processing for the voice network architecture. The soft switch sites manage the gateway sites in a preferred embodiment, using a protocol such as the Internet Protocol Device Control (IPDC) protocol to request the set-up and tear-down of calls. The gateway sites originate and terminate calls between calling parties and called parties through the data network. The gateway sites include network access devices to provide access to network resources. The data network connects one or more of the soft switch sites to one or more of the gateway sites. The provisioning and network event component collects call events recorded at the soft switch sites. The network management component includes a network operations center (NOC) for centralized network management.

A signaling network routing node, such as a signaling system 7 (SS7) / Internet protocol (IP) gateway, is adapted to perform global title translation (GTT) or other processing on received signaling messages and route the signaling messages to a member of a load sharing group using a threshold-based weighted load sharing algorithm. In the event that one of the signaling destinations in the load sharing group becomes unavailable, signaling message traffic is redistributed evenly among the remaining available members of the load sharing group in a manner such that a maximum load sharing weight threshold value associated with each group member is not exceeded. If a load sharing group member becomes unavailable, and the resulting recalculated load sharing weights of the remaining available members sum to less than 100%, then load sharing weights for the group are normalized, and a maximum message rate capacity threshold associated with each group member is used to determine whether the discarding of messages is required.

A method is disclosed for detecting and diagnosing faults in a network. The network has a plurality of nodes through which switched virtual connections can be established. First, all attempts at establishing routes through the network are recorded. Then, the location of a failure is determined by analyzing the attempted routes.