Network Application Gateway Offloading Stateful Operations
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Solution Overview
Problem
Legacy systems' transition to IP systems faces challenges in preserving reliability and system-wide resilience, as well as managing stateful operations for session management and policing SIP messages, which are costly and inefficient.
Innovation Solution
A network application offloads stateful operations to a user-plane application, allowing it to maintain state information and perform error recovery, thereby enabling stateless operation and ensuring correct routing and policing of SIP messages without requiring the network application to be stateful.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a big iron approach with fault-tolerant hardware and stateful inspection is used to preserve reliability, then reliability is maintained, but cost increases and system-wide resilience capabilities are ignored
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the network functions by separating stateful operations (performed by user-plane applications) from control plane functions. This allows the control plane to remain simple and stateless while reliability is maintained through distributed stateful operations in the user plane, resolving the contradiction between reliability and system complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary mechanism where user-plane applications act as mediators that maintain state information and perform stateful operations on behalf of the control plane. This intermediary approach preserves reliability without requiring the control plane elements to be stateful, reducing overall system complexity.
2Reliability
If stateful operations are maintained in network applications for session management and SIP policing, then session management reliability is improved, but cost and operational complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts stateful operations from network applications and places them in user-plane applications. This extraction allows network applications to operate in a simpler, stateless manner while user-plane applications handle the complex stateful operations, reducing deployment cost and operational complexity while maintaining session management reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements copying of state information between user-plane applications and network applications. The user-plane application maintains a copy of state information that can be used to perform stateful operations, eliminating the need for network applications to maintain expensive stateful hardware while preserving session management capabilities.
3Reliability
If edge proxy maintains state information for SIP message policing, then SIP message routing control is improved, but device complexity and operational overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables user-plane applications to perform self-service by autonomously maintaining state information and performing stateful operations without requiring complex control plane intervention. This self-service approach simplifies operational overhead while maintaining SIP message routing control through the stateful capabilities of user-plane applications.
Data Source
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AI summary
In one embodiment, a network application may offload stateful operations to a user-plane application. In one embodiment, the network application receives state information for a user device. The network application then sends the state information to a user-plane application, which can maintain the state information. The network application may then offload a stateful operation to the user-plane application. For example, the network application may have the user-plane application perform stateful operations. Also, the network application may use the state information maintained at the user-plane application for error recovery after the network application fails. For example, the network application may recover the state information from the user-plane application after failure.