Flexible policing technique for telecommunications traffic
AssigneeAlcatel Canada Inc.
InventorsTom Davis, Predrag Kostic
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A policing technique for a telecommunications traffic of variable length packets is described. The technique uses a plurality of police engines, grouped in pairs. A selection module selects a police engine pair to process a packet. Each police engine contains a conformance unit, credit unit and a debit unit, in which the credit update of one police engine influences the credit update of the other police engine in the pair. The technique also uses a combinatorial function to decide on a category of a processed packet and which police engines to update their debit units.
Claims12
A policing apparatus for policing a telecommunications traffic consisting of a series of packets, comprising:
- at least a pair of police engine modules for processing the packets, each police engine module including a conformance unit, a credit unit and a debit unit, the conformance unit generating a conformance result of the processed packet,
- a selection module for sending a received packet to one or both of the police engine modules in a pair for processing in parallel;
- a combinatorial module for receiving the conformance results of the police engine modules to decide on a category of the received packet and on which police engine modules to update the debit unit, and
- the credit unit of one police engine module for performing credit updating in response to the state of the credit unit of the other police engine module.
A policing apparatus for policing a telecommunications traffic consisting of a series of packets, comprising:
- at least a pair of police engine modules for processing the packets, each police engine module including a conformance unit which generates a conformance result of the processed packet based on the state of the police engine module, and a credit unit and a debit unit, the two latter units for adjusting the state of the police engine module as they update;
- a selection module for sending a received packet to one or both of the police engine modules in a pair for processing in parallel;
- and
- a combinatorial module for receiving the conformance results of the police engine modules to decide on a category of the received packet and on which police engine modules to update the debit unit,
- wherein:
- the conformance unit of each police engine module independently meters the received packet to generate conformance result, based on the state of the police engine module;
- the combinatorial module bases for decision on a preset combinatorial relationship of the conformance results of the police engine modules and instructs the debit unit of the decided police engine module to adjust the state and to classify the received packet, and
- the credit unit of one police engine module updates in response to the credit unit of another police engine module in the pair.
A policing method for policing a telecommunications traffic consisting of a series of packets, comprising steps of:
- sending a received packet to one or both of at least a pair of police engine modules for processing, each of which has a conformance unit, credit unit and debit unit;
- updating the credit unit of one police engine module, when instructed by the credit unit of the other police engine module in the pair;
- metering in each police engine module the received packet at the conformance unit to generate a conformance result;
- generating a combinatorial decision based on a combinatorial relationship of the conformance results within the pair of police engine modules;
- deciding on a category of the received packet based on the combinatorial decision, and
- updating the debit unit of a police engine module, selected on the combinatorial decision.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.