The present invention relates generally to telecommunications systems and, in particular, to methods and systems for querying the status of peer-to-peer multimedia communication services and calls, e.g., for charging/billing purposes.
Communications technologies and uses have greatly changed over the last few decades. In the fairly recent past, copper wire technologies were the primary mechanism used for transmitting voice communications over long distances. As computers were introduced, the capability to exchange data between remote sites became desirable for many purposes including those of businesses, individual users and educational institutions. The introduction of cable television and its associated coaxial cable rollout created another mechanism for increasing communications and data delivery from businesses to the public. As technology continued to move forward, digital subscriber line (DSL) transmission equipment was introduced which allowed for faster data transmissions over the existing copper phone wire infrastructure. Additionally, two way exchanges of information over the cable infrastructure became available to businesses and the public. Wireless communications have become ubiquitous with large percentages of the various populations acquiring cell phones. These numerous advances have promoted growth in service options and applications available for users.
As the consumer electronics industry continues to mature, and the capabilities of processors increase, more devices have become available for public use that allow for the transfer of data between devices and more services have become available that operate based on this transferred data. Of particular note are the Internet and local area networks (LANs). These two innovations allow multiple users and multiple devices to communicate and exchange data between different devices and device types. Regarding the Internet, its physical structure and associated communication streams have also evolved to handle an increased flow of data. Servers have more memory than ever before, communications links exist that have a higher bandwidth than in the past, processors are faster and more capable and protocols exist to take advantage of these elements. As consumers' usage of the Internet grows, service companies have turned to the Internet (and other Internet Protocol (IP) networks) as a mechanism for providing traditional services, as well as newer, multimedia types of services. These multimedia services include, for example, Internet Protocol television (IPTV, referring to systems or services that deliver television programs over a network using IP data packets), video on demand (VOD), voice over IP (VoIP), and other web related services received singly or bundled together. Similar comments apply to wireless networks which can also handle communications with devices through the Internet or other connected networks.
To accommodate the new and different ways in which IP networks are being used to provide various services, new network architectures are being developed and standardized. One such development is the Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). IMS is an architectural framework for delivering IP multimedia services, such as IPTV or IMS messaging services, to an end user. A simplified exemplary IMS architecture is described below with respect to
Typically, as discussed in more detail below, application servers involved in peer-to-peer multimedia services and which operate as the charging mechanisms for the provision of these services are only involved in the signaling path of the multimedia service and not in the media path, i.e., the path over which the payload information associated with the multimedia service travels. Thus, these application servers are only able to bill customers based upon the session setup information which is available to them over the signaling path, rather than the actual media content which is transferred as part of the multimedia service. The session set-up information may, or may not, provide sufficiently accurate information regarding how to charge for the multimedia call between, e.g., two mobile phones. For example, if the session is set-up between the two peer devices in order to transfer music, but later is used to transfer video, it may be desirable to bill the customer based upon the actual media transferred rather than the indication of the media to be transferred which was available at session set-up.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2007/0174400, to Cai et al., describes a mechanism for IMS budget control for a media change during an IMS session. In this publication, IMS networks are described as allowing for media changes (e.g., audio to audio/video) during an IMS session. The mechanism described in this publication relies upon the subscriber to initiate communications associated with the media change, i.e., a push mechanism. However, network operators may prefer to exercise more control over this activity for billing purposes.
Accordingly, exemplary embodiments described below address the needs described above for status inquiry methods and systems associated with, e.g., charging for peer-to-peer multimedia services.
Systems and methods according to the present invention address this need and others by providing, for example, pull mechanisms for gathering status information which can be used to charge customers for peer-to-peer multimedia services or calls.
According to one exemplary embodiment a method for querying a status of a peer-to-peer multimedia connection includes sending a message, from an application server, querying the status of the peer-to-peer multimedia connection, and receiving a response, at the application server, regarding the status of the peer-to-peer multimedia connection.
According to another exemplary embodiment, a communication node includes a processor which sends a message which queries a status of a peer-to-peer multimedia connection, and which receives a response regarding the status of the peer-to-peer multimedia connection.
According to yet another exemplary embodiment, a method for handling a status inquiry associated with a peer-to-peer multimedia connection includes receiving a message, at a terminal device, querying the status of the peer-to-peer multimedia connection, and sending a response, from the terminal device, regarding the status of the peer-to-peer multimedia connection.
According to still another exemplary embodiment, a terminal device includes a processor which receives a message querying a status of a peer-to-peer multimedia connection and which sends a response regarding the status of said peer-to-peer multimedia connection.
The accompanying drawings illustrate exemplary embodiments, wherein:
a) illustrates a peer-to-peer connection including a signaling path and a media path in which exemplary embodiments can operate;
b) depicts the signaling path of
a) and 5(b) are flowcharts illustrating methods for querying a status of a peer-to-peer connection and responding thereto, respectively, according to exemplary embodiments.
The following detailed description of the exemplary embodiments refers to the accompanying drawings. The same reference numbers in different drawings identify the same or similar elements. Also, the following detailed description does not limit the invention. Instead, the scope of the invention is defined by the appended claims.
To provide some context for the following exemplary embodiments, and as mentioned briefly above, a simplified exemplary IMS system architecture 10 can, for example, be broken down into three layers: a service layer 12, a control layer 14, and a connectivity layer 16, as shown in
The connectivity layer 16 includes, for example, routers and switches used in both the backbone network and the access network. These elements are represented in
Although these exemplary embodiments refer to communication systems architected in accordance with 3GPP, it will be appreciated that the present invention is not limited thereto. However taking 3GPP communication systems as an example, such systems also typically provide a charging management framework which enables operators to charge customers for the usage of their networks' services. This aspect of charging or billing in 3GPP communication systems will be better understood by considering the example shown in
Therein, a sending mobile unit 200 and a recipient mobile unit 210 are engaged in a direct, peer-to-peer connection to, e.g., transfer multimedia content there between via a media path 220. Although not shown in
To set-up a SIP session for instant messaging (IM) between mobile units 200 and 210, SIP User Agent 260 can send, for example, a SIP INVITE message toward mobile unit 210. As seen in
In the signaling illustrated in
According to exemplary embodiments of the present invention, accurate and flexible charging mechanisms are provided by enabling an application server, e.g., the application server 290 and/or 294, to query the MSRP status of the client side during a SIP session. Based on the client's response, the application server which issued the query can determine whether to permit the MSRP or SIP session to continue or, alternatively, whether to tear down that session. Additionally, the client's response can be used by the application server to generate and transmit charging information messages associated with the multimedia connection for billing purposes. Since these exemplary embodiments provide for a pull mechanism, i.e., wherein the network is requesting the information and controls the process, network operators will be able to tailor the process to suit their implementation needs associated with the billing and charging for peer-to-peer multimedia connections.
An exemplary signaling technique according to an embodiment is illustrated in
Initially, according to this exemplary embodiment, the application server 290 builds a SIP INVITE (or perhaps more accurately referred to as a re-INVITE since it is within an ongoing session) message 304 using Session Description Protocol (SDP), which message 304 includes one or more media lines (i.e., “m=(some media name and transport address)” indicating that the request is directed to the MSRP 230 and one or more attribute lines (i.e., “a=(some session attribute)” to form the query. As a purely illustrative example, the portion of the SDP in the SIP re-INVITE message 304 associated with this query could be represented as:
The application server 290 sends this SIP re-INVITE message 304 toward the S-CSCF 280 along the incoming leg L1-L2 of the signaling path 250 inside the existing SIP session. S-CSCF 280 passes the receive SIP re-INVITE message 304 to the SIP UA 260 in the terminal 200. The SIP UA 260 interacts with the MSRP function 230 to obtain the information requested by the application server 290. For example, SIP UA 260 can parse the “a= . . . ” line from the SDP carried by the SIP re-INVITE message 304 and use that information to form an internal query, i.e., MSRP-status request message 306, which is sent to MSRP function 230. This MSRP-status request message can include, for example, requests for information about the type of data, e.g., audio, video or other, which has been sent by MSRP function 230 for MSRP session 302 and/or about the type of data to be sent using MSRP session 302.
In response to the request message 306, MSRP 230 will send an MSRP-status response message 308 to SIP UA 260 which includes the requested information. SIP UA 260, in turn, sends updated MSRP status information associated with session 302 to S-CSCF 280, e.g., via a SIP 200 OK message 310. Like the SIP re-INVITE message 304, SIP 200 OK message 310 can carry SDP information associated with the MSRP session status including, e.g., information about the type of data sent, the amount of data sent, the type of data to be sent and the amount of data to be sent. A purely illustrative example of this portion of a SIP 200 OK message, e.g., using SDP media lines “m=(some media name and transport address)” indicating that the request is directed to the application server 290 and one or more SDP attribute lines (i.e., “a=(some session attribute)”, according to an exemplary embodiment is as follows:
S-CSCF 260 forwards the SIP 200 OK message 310 on to the application server 290 which initiated the query. The application server 290 may, optionally, extract the MSRP status information from the incoming SIP 200 OK message 310 and send that information, e.g., as a Call Detail Record (CDR) message 314, toward a billing system (BS) 312, which will typically acknowledge receipt of that information via response 316. Regardless of whether the application server 290 sends a CDR message 314 as part of its query procedure 303 or not, it will nonetheless acknowledge receipt of the MSRP status information back to the terminal 200 via SIP ACK message 318 via S-CSCF 280.
As mentioned above, the application server 290 which initiated a query regarding the MSRP status of terminal 200 may, based on the status information which was returned or in the absence of a response, decide to tear down the multimedia connection. This can, for example be accomplished by way of the signaling procedure 320 shown in
The exemplary embodiments described above illustrate various techniques and systems for querying the status of a peer-to-peer multimedia connection. As stated therein, this involves signaling between terminal devices and communication nodes within a network, e.g., application servers and S-CSCFs. An exemplary communications node or terminal device 400, which is capable of performing the transmission, receipt and processing of the various messages described above is illustrated in
Utilizing the above-described exemplary techniques and systems according to exemplary embodiments, an exemplary method for querying a status of a peer-to-peer multimedia connection, e.g., from the network's perspective, is shown in
The above-described exemplary embodiments are intended to be illustrative in all respects, rather than restrictive, of the present invention. Thus the present invention is capable of many variations in detailed implementation that can be derived from the description contained herein by a person skilled in the art. For example, although the foregoing example is performed over the L1-L2 leg of the signaling path, the status inquiry could also, for example, be performed over the L5-L6 leg of the signaling path. All such variations and modifications are considered to be within the scope and spirit of the present invention as defined by the following claims. No element, act, or instruction used in the description of the present class should be construed as critical or essential to the invention unless explicitly described as such. Also, as used herein, the article “a” is intended to include one or more items.