UC Disaster Call Rerouting With Preconfigured Number Mapping
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Solution Overview
Problem
UC networks experience outages due to disasters or failures, leading to unreachable called parties and missed calls, which can be critical for enterprises, especially in medical facilities or businesses, resulting in significant financial and operational disruptions.
Innovation Solution
A disaster plan system is implemented with a disaster plan server that stores mappings of original telephony numbers to substitute numbers, allowing rerouting of calls through a routing server and session border controller to ensure communication continuity during outages.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of energy
If a UC network is used to integrate all communication services, then cost savings are achieved, but reliability deteriorates during disaster events causing complete outage
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-configures disaster plan mappings that associate original telephony numbers with substitute telephony numbers before disasters occur. When a disaster event is detected, the routing server immediately activates the appropriate disaster plan and reroutes calls without requiring real-time decision-making, thus maintaining reliability while keeping the unified communications architecture intact for cost efficiency
Solution Approach 2:
The routing server acts as an intermediary between the UC network and the PSTN. During disaster events, it mediates call routing by intercepting calls to original telephony numbers and redirecting them to substitute numbers through the session border controller, thereby preserving the unified communications structure while ensuring continued availability through alternative routing paths
2Reliability
If call routing is changed dynamically during outage, then communication continuity is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
Disaster plan mappings are pre-configured in the routing server before disasters occur, establishing associations between original telephony numbers and substitute telephony numbers. When a disaster is detected, the system simply activates a pre-defined plan rather than performing complex real-time routing decisions, thereby maintaining communication continuity while minimizing the operational complexity of routing management
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes routing parameters by switching from using original telephony number mappings to substitute telephony number mappings when a disaster plan is activated. This parameter change approach allows dynamic adaptation to disaster conditions while keeping the underlying routing infrastructure and management procedures relatively simple and standardized
Data Source
AI summary
A method for rerouting communication in a unified communications network. The method comprises: receiving, at a disaster plan server, a mapping of an original telephony number to a substitute telephony number; storing, at the disaster plan server, the mapping between the original telephony number and the substitute telephone number as part of a disaster plan; receiving, at a disaster plan server, a request to activate the disaster plan; transmitting, from the disaster plan server to a routing server, a message to activate the disaster plan based on receiving the request to activate the disaster plan; revising, at the routing server, routing details to the original telephony number based on the disaster plan; and routing, at a session border controller, a call to the original telephony number to a new destination based on the revised routing details associated with the disaster plan.