Each element i. Each successive tag - - structure referenced in tag - - array is serially loaded from tag - - file until all the elements of all tag - - structure are loaded. The index points to a tag - - structure that contains information for formatting the raw billing data 35 to a desired output format.
Formatting step "Format Data Depending On tag Structure Elements" , the tag - - structure causes the formatting to change depending on which tag - - structure in tag - - array is chosen, that is, which tag - - structure is indexed by tag - - number Possible formatting effects include: 1 the effect of having the formatter insert constant values from a file, such as, values read from the formatter configuration file 43; 2 the effect of invoking a specific routine at an address, specified by a pointer in tag - - structure The use of a stored address to a specific routine ensures that custom software modules can be added later in time as necessary without the need to change the base software code running on format process 40; 3 the effect of doing nothing and moving onto the next raw billing data 35; and 4 the effect of inserting tag - - value 37 received with the associated tag - - number 36 in raw billing data 35 to a desired output format.
For example, a tag - - value 36 corresponds to the date the telephony service was provided may be represented in an eight bit-wide field, the formatting effect would convert this eight bit wide representation to a desired output format comprising a 4 bit wide field.
Alternatively, the formatting effect for tag - - value 36 may include the expansion off the number of bits in the representative field from 4 bits to 8 bits by padding the additional requisite bits with a constant logical value.
Next step in the format process "Output Formatted Data to Output Buffer" the tag - - structure , controls the desired output format. The desired output buffer storage template is specified as an element table - - number in tag - - structure The desired output format is specified as an element in tag - - structure It should be understood that editing the configuration file 43 will cause the formatter processor 40 to behave differently depending on what values are loaded during initialization into tag - - array see FIG.
This allows the customization of formatter processor 40 without the need to change to formatting source code. In another embodiment, the format processor 40 in FIG. The storage system will keep the formatted output for a selectable period of time, such as a 5 to 30 business days for retransmission of the formatted output if the customer supplied billing service 60 is temporarily unavailable or is being serviced.
While the invention has been illustrated and described in the preferred embodiments, many modifications and changes therein may be affected by those skilled in the art. It is to be understood that the invention is not limited to the precise construction herein disclosed.
Accordingly, the right is reserved to all changes and modifications coming within the true spirit and scope of the invention.
All rights reserved. Login Sign up. Search Expert Search Quick Search. Billing formatter for telephone systems utilizing intelligent peripherals in advanced intelligent network. United States Patent A billing processing method is disclosed for a telephone system comprising at least one central office switching system, wherein a peripheral subsystem is connected to the central office switching systems via a call connection channel, the peripheral subsystem comprising means for providing at least one auxiliary call processing capability via the call connection channel; and the peripheral subsystem comprising means for providing billing information out to a central office communication network.
The billing processing method comprising the steps of: 1 receiving raw billing data from the peripheral subsystem; 2 associating the raw billing data with a formatting object; 3 converting the raw billing data as specified in the formatting object into a formatted data object; and 4 outputting the data object to the central office communication network. The measure of the rate at which information can be passed. A slot or group of slots, usually on a systemboard motherboard , that are populated by memory modules of the same capacity.
A slang term for general memory in a computer; the memory bank. Measuring performance qualities such as efficiency or spending of enterprise organizations or processes such IS against comparative benchmarks.
An attempt to gain control over a line in order to transmit data. Usually associated with contention style of sharing a single line among several terminals. Slang term used to describe an online blog that is written by lawyers, or one that is focused on providing legal-oriented content. A communication pathway between the components in your computer. Bus topology has computers connected to a strand of network cabling that is connected to network repeaters at one end and terminated at the other.
All Rights Reserved. Create at AgencyofRecord. B for bandwidth. For personal computers a byte is usually 8 bits. It is a clear channel "pipe" that carries voice, data, or video over ISDN. The BRI service offered to home users has two B channels.
It is usually applied exclusively to electronic commerce. B2E business-to-employee The use and leverage of e-business approaches and Internet technologies to deliver a comprehensive set of services to an enterprise's employees and their managers. The full term is sometimes presented as "business-to-enterprise. When eight "zeros" in a row are detected, a pattern with intentional bipolar violations is substituted. At its broadest level, BAM is the convergence of operational business intelligence and real-time application integration.
BAN Body Area Networks an emerging field of technology that has the potential to revolutionize healthcare and pathbreaking applications in sports, communications and security. BAPI packages multiple internal functions to enable programmatic access to such higher-order tasks as checking customer numbers, providing product descriptions, selecting products, creating quotations or creating orders.
It contains any number of compiled message flows. This committee meets every three months at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland.
BCS basic content services BCSs provide document library services with complementary ad hoc imaging, basic Web publishing, document collaboration and document routing as their core functionalities. BCUG bilateral closed user group In data communication, two users who have bilaterally agreed to communicate with each other, but not with other users. BCVs are copies of active data volumes that are separately addressed from the source volume.
BD Blu-ray Disc This is an optical disc format that was developed to enable recording, playback, and rewriting of HD video. This technology has a storage capacity far greater than that of traditional DVDs. Bellcore changed its name to Telcordia Technologies in It's an extension to the fax protocol. BGA ball grid array As opposed to a pin grid array PGA , a ball grid array is a type of microchip connection methodology. Ball grid array chips typically use a group of solder dots, or balls, arranged in concentric rectangles to connect to a circuit board.
It enables an enterprise to route Information Protocol IP traffic destined for the same IP address via different network connections. In a BGP-4 environment, when a transmission comes from an Internet service provider's network, it will look for the primary router that connects to the enterprise's location.
BHCAs measure the amount of calls that a voice system can attempt to handle in a continuous one-hour period for example, 2, busy hour call attempts or, equivalently, 2, call attempts during the busy hour. BHCA capacities include all calls attempted, whether completed or not. The capacity of a processor can be measured in terms of BHCCs. Bits per second is the standard way of measuring how fast data moves across a network or phone system. For example, a 56K modem can hypothetically transfer data at 56, bits per second.
The number of bits used to represent a character. B2B is also commonly used as an adjective to describe any activity, be it B2B marketing, sales, or e-commerce, that occurs between businesses and other businesses. The use and leverage of e-business approaches and Internet technologies to deliver a comprehensive set of services to an enterprise's employees and their managers.
A Gartner term that defines the concept of providing real-time access to critical business performance indicators to improve the speed and effectiveness of business operations.
The unit of deployment to the broker; also known as a bar file. A type of system board in Windows, a file whose name ends in. A computerized meeting and announcement system that allows people to carry on discussions, upload and download files, and make announcements without the people being connected to the computer at the same time.
Java 2 platform, Enterprise Edition J2EE framework that helps developers quickly construct high-performance J2EE applications following industry-standard design patterns. An opaque cache manager structure that is used to maintain state as a file system pins and releases data for example, its volume structure in the cache.
When you send an e-mail to only one person, you type the recipient's address in the "To:" field. A control character added to a block in character oriented protocols such as Bisync used for determining if the block was received in error. Library intended to give users a convenient possibility to analyze, create, and manipulate binary Java class files.
The BCI promotes the highest standards of professional competence and commercial ethics in the provision, maintenance and services for Business Continuity Management BCM. Means that a certain manner of proceeding is in general the most logical choice A program used to copy databases or parts of databases in Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server environments.
BCSs provide document library services with complementary ad hoc imaging, basic Web publishing, document collaboration and document routing as their core functionalities.
In data communication, two users who have bilaterally agreed to communicate with each other, but not with other users. This is an optical disc format that was developed to enable recording, playback, and rewriting of HD video.
A bit sent by a frame relay network to notify an interface device DTE that congestion avoidance procedures should be initiated by the sending device. Allowing other carriers' subscribers to roam on your network can be a great source of revenue, provided you can make the technical hurdle of capturing the necessary information and perform the automated transactions to reconcile charges between you and your roaming partners.
QuantumSI has developed a turnkey solution and deployed it to wireless carriers for just this purpose. All times are adjusted for STP lag time, a user-entered value which accounts for the time required for STP throughput. This value is added to message receipt time for messages with a direction indication of sent and subtracted from message receipt time for messages with a direction indication of received. Thus, the data pertaining to the call, as stored in the node, is reformatted into the BDR and the node is cleared and marked as unused.
The cleared and marked node is thus flagged for reuse. Referring now to FIGS. The searchtree database includes a plurality of nodes organized in a balanced searchtree architecture where each node is utilized to store the data for a call being processed. The searchtree database utilizes a balanced tree architecture for storing call search keys and call data so as to facilitate correlating the IAM and subsequent ISUP messages.
Kruse, Bruce P. Leung and Clovis L. With reference to FIG. These search keys are stored in fields , respectively, of the Call Data Key Structure Field of the Call Data Key Structure contains a pointer to the parent key node of a node under consideration in the searchtree structure.
The algorithm used for the tree structure is a multiway balanced tree, the "multiway" referring to the key node having multiple key entries contained within its structure.
The field contains a pointer to a child node used in branching and, as indicated, points to key values greater than the key under consideration but less than the next key in the node. The Call Data Key Structure may also include a field not shown for indicating the number of keys in the current node.
The Call Data Structure is comprised of fields Field contains an indication of the Call Type. It is appreciated that the description given in field of "seconds since midnight Jan. Fields and are filled directly from CBR fields , , , , , and , respectively.
Fields contain indications of whether or not the various ISUP messages have been received for the node. The field contains a Guard Indicator that is set when an incomplete billing record is written. The field contains a Long Duration Indicator set by the long duration function in the correlation function and is set to 1 if the elapsed time is greater than or equal to 24 hours and is set to 2 if the elapsed time is greater than or equal to 48 hours.
The fields and are utilized to provide records for long duration calls. It is appreciated that the release field is set by the long duration function of the correlation function when the Long Duration Indicator of field is greater than zero. Such functionality includes the capability for inserting nodes, deleting nodes, entering CBR data into nodes, searching for node keys, restructuring searchtree, etc.
The correlation function includes a function for inserting a received IAM into an appropriate node of the searchtree database These parameters uniquely define the voice circuit of the call. The functions and utilize the searchtree maintenance functionality to locate the node for the call and to insert the data therein.
To ensure that all the ISUP messages for one call setup are correctly correlated, a check date time function is included. The function checks the incoming messages date and timestamp fields against the date and timestamps of the other messages held for the same keys. The correlation function includes a function for computing the elapsed time and connect time for a call when all of the node data has been stored therefor.
The Exit Timer shall preferably have a definable range of 0. As discussed above, the data for table is entered and stored as part of system configuration. The function uses the table to obtain the time lag adjustment for the STP associated with the Point Code 1 and Point Code 2 data.
The time adjustment is applied to each timestamp, as discussed above, by adding the adjustment for messages with a direction indication of sent and subtracting the adjustment for messages with a direction indication of received. The function next determines the connect or start time for the call. The start time is computed in seconds and tenths of seconds from the data in the fields and Access charges are then calculated based on time of receipt of ACM.
Access charges are then calculated based on time of receipt of ANM. For both Call Types access and conversation, the call completion or end time is based on the time of receipt of the RSC message, or the REL message, whichever is received first. The function computes the elapsed time for the call by subtracting the start time and tenths from the end time and tenths.
The function includes a long duration function that sets the Long Duration Indicator of the Call Data Structure as described above. The Long Duration Indicator has a default value of zero and the long duration function sets the indicator to 1 if elapsed time is greater than or equal to 24 hours and to 2 if elapsed time is greater than or equal to It is appreciated that the function computes the elapsed time for long duration calls by using the BAF Record Generation Time as the end time when a Long Duration Indicator not shown is set to indicate long duration processing.
The BDR is built when the data contains sufficient data to complete a billing record and when a long duration call connection is determined by the function The current date and time fields and indicate the current date and time that the BDR is built by the build BDR function The function derives the current date and time from the time standard discussed in said Ser.
Current time is used by the applications 92 in long duration call processing and reporting. The Guard Indicator field and the long duration field are derived from the corresponding fields and of the Call Data Structure as described above with respect to FIG. The contents of these fields are derived from the respective corresponding fields of the Call Data Structure discussed above.
These fields are all of type character. The maintain searchtree function deletes all of the data in the Call Data Key Structure and Call Data structure of the node and marks the fields and as unused. Structures and modules are composed of tables fields. Conversions and translations are performed using system database accesses. The formats for the structure and modules constructed by function are provided in FIGS.
Fields identify the record and structure. The Call Code is either for access or conversation time measurement. The field includes a Recording Office Identification which is explained as follows. As explained, these applications are similar with respect to each other and, for convenience, may generically be denoted as the Call Billing CB application.
In use of the platform 80, the RAO of the user telephone company opens a transmission session with the platform 80 to call for BAF files.
In this case the application is CB. The user terminals 88 FIG. A sequence of screens on the user terminals 88 permit the user to first select the CB application and the user is then provided with the window in which to enter the Recording Office ID.
In this manner, the Recording Office ID entered by the user is linked to the application that is generating the particular Structure Code In other words, field identifies the application in this case CB deployed on the platform 80 with respect to which the RAO is requesting data. With continued reference to FIG. The Timing Indicator field is derived from fields and of the BDR and indicates if the record is for a long duration connection call.
In the manner described above, the Structure Code would include additional fields in a product application program embodiment of the invention. These fields are derived from the corresponding respective fields of the BDR, as discussed above. The Module Code is appended to the Structure Code when the call elapsed time is greater than or equal to 48 hours as indicated by the BDR long duration field The Module Code is also appended to Structure Code when a call completes with an elapsed time greater than 24 hours as indicated by the BDR long duration field The details of long duration call processing and reporting are fully explained in said GRCORE which is incorporated herein by reference.
Briefly, the first record of a long duration connection is generated at the first scheduled BAF Record Generation Time after the elapsed time of the call exceeds 24 hours. The elapsed time for the first record of this call is the interval from call connect time to the time when the record is generated and reflects the end time being set at the BAF Record Generation Time as discussed above. The Timing Indicator field indicates that this is the first record of a long duration connection sequence.
A continuation record is generated at each BAF Record Generation Time that occurs between the time a call's first records is made and call disconnect. A continuation record is also generated at call disconnect. A continuation record contains the Module Code The Present Date and Present Time fields and include the date and time when the record is generated.
A continuation record is denoted by the Timing Indicator field The elapsed time reported in a continuation record is the interval from the time when the previous record was generated to either the time the current record is generated or the time the call disconnects. It is appreciated from FIGS. Thus, it is appreciated that the platform 80 monitoring CCS links with the Call Billing CB applications deployed thereon, as described, determines the actual duration of telephone calls by collecting the specified ISUP messages and, based on the arrival times of these messages, determines the duration of all calls between user-specified point codes.
The information gathered from the MSUs correlated for a call together with the MSU audit data, such as time, date, direction and linkset source, are processed by the present invention to generate accurate billing records. The above described embodiment of the invention is explained in terms of utilizing RSC and REL for call termination detection.
While the invention has been described in its preferred embodiment, it is to be understood that the words which have been used are words of description rather than of limitation and that changes may be made within the purview of the appended claims without departing from the true scope and spirit of the invention in its broader aspects.
We claim: 1. In a telephone network that includes a Common Channel Signaling CCS network designed to transport SS7 Signal Units SU , said SUs including Message Signal Units MSU , said telephone network having switching offices with respect to which telephone calls can be set up and terminated, said switching offices setting up a particular call by transmitting on said CCS network call setup MSUs of respective call setup types containing call data identifying said particular call, said switching offices terminating said particular call by transmitting on said CCS network call terminating MSUs of respective call terminating types containing said call data, said CCS network including means for copying said SUs transitting said CCS network, apparatus for generating a call duration billing record for said particular call, comprising: input means for receiving said copied SUs and applying a timestamp to each of said copied SUs in accordance with the time of receipt thereof,.
The apparatus of claim 4 wherein said elapsed time computing means is operative to base said start time on the timestamp of said IAM. The apparatus of claim 4 wherein said elapsed time computing means is operative to base said start time on the timestamp of said EXM. The apparatus of claim 4 wherein said elapsed time computing means is operative to base said start time on the timestamp of said ACM. The apparatus of claim 4 wherein said elapsed time computing means is operative to base said start time on the timestamp of said ANM.
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