Unified Service Plan Provisioning for Network Policy Silos
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Solution Overview
Problem
The divergent appliance-level destinations for control and accounting policy instructions in network service plans lead to silos of development and implementation, significantly slowing the deployment of new service plans and often resulting in less cogent plan design and implementation, taking many months and hundreds of development/implementation hours.
Innovation Solution
An integrated network-service design environment that enables centralized, unified, coordinated development of access-control, service-accounting, and service-notification policies, with automated translation into provisioning instructions for network elements and end-user devices, allowing hierarchical organization and concurrent activation of overlapping service plans.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If control and accounting policies are developed separately by different teams for different network appliances, then each team can specialize in their respective functions, but the deployment of new service plans is significantly slowed and development hours increase to many months and hundreds of hours
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines control policy and accounting policy development into a unified service plan definition process. A single service plan configuration in the service design center simultaneously generates both control policies (for access control network elements) and accounting policies (for billing network elements), eliminating the need for separate parallel development teams and their associated coordination overhead.
Solution Approach 2:
The service design center implements a universal service plan definition interface that serves multiple functions: it defines service parameters, generates control policies, generates accounting policies, and provisions both to appropriate network elements. This multi-functional system replaces the need for separate specialized tools and processes for control and accounting policy development.
2Adaptability or versatility
If control and accounting policies are developed in separate silos, then each policy can be optimized independently, but the overall service plan design becomes less cogent and integration problems arise
Solution Approach 1:
The service design center merges control and accounting policy definitions into a unified service plan object. Both policy types are derived from the same service parameters and requirements, ensuring they are coherent and properly integrated. The system automatically coordinates their provisioning to respective network elements while maintaining design consistency.
3Ease of manufacture
If multiple network appliances are programmed separately to execute control and accounting functions, then each appliance can be optimized for its specific function, but the number of development and implementation hours increases to hundreds of hours
Solution Approach 1:
The service design center performs preliminary service plan definition and validation before provisioning to network elements. The system pre-generates both control and accounting policies from a single service plan specification, pre-configures the necessary network element instructions, and prepares provisioning packages in advance, significantly reducing on-site implementation time.
Solution Approach 2:
The service design center implements automated policy generation and provisioning capabilities that reduce manual configuration work. The system automatically translates service plan definitions into appropriate control and accounting policies, self-provisions them to network elements, and handles coordination without requiring extensive manual programming of each network appliance.
Data Source
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AI summary
A technique involves modular storage of network service plan components and provisioning of same. A subset of the capabilities of a service design system can be granted to a sandbox system to enable customization of service plan offerings or other controls.