Fault tolerant voice processing system
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsJohn Holland, Paul Ranford, Peter Robson
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A fault tolerance call processing system is disclosed. The fault tolerance at the server level is achieved by shadowing between primary functional components and standby functional components running on a plurality of processors accommodated on several CT servers. The fault tolerance at resource level is achieved by allowing reallocation of resources from any circuit boards and platforms to process a call.
Claims24
A fault tolerance call processing system for connection to the public switched telephone network comprising:
- a plurality of client computers containing call processing applications;
- a plurality of voice processing resources required for processing calls;
- and
- at least two computer telephony servers for interfacing between said client computers and said voice processing resources, each of said servers containing one or more processors communicating with said call processing applications and said resources, each of said processors having one or more primary and/or standby functional components each of which carrying out a particular call processing function, each of said standby functional components beginning to work only when its counterpart primary functional component stops operating whereby a fault tolerance at the server level is achieved by shadowing between said primary functional components and their counterpart standby functional components;
- wherein each of said two servers contains at least one of said primary functional components and at least one of said standby functional components, and at least one of said primary functional components and its standby functional components are located in different servers.
A two-tier fault tolerance call processing system for connection to the public switched telephone network comprising:
- a plurality of platforms, each of said platforms containing one or more circuit boards, and each of said circuit boards containing at least one call processing resources;
- one or more computer telephony servers for interfacing to a plurality, of client computers containing call processing applications, each of said servers containing one or more processors communicating with said call processing applications and each of said platforms, each of said processors having one or more primary and/or standby functional components each of which carrying out a particular call processing function;
- allocation software running on said servers for allocating, in responses to messages from said call processing applications, a group of resources from said platforms for a particular telephone call being processed, said allocation software being arranged to allocate the resources either from the same or different platforms, depending upon availability;
- wherein at least one of said primary functional components has a standby functional component on said servers, said standby functional component beginning to work only when its counterpart primary functional component stops operating whereby a fault tolerance at the server level is achieved by shadowing between said primary functional components and their counterpart standby functional components;
- and
- wherein a fault tolerance among the resources is achieved by re-allocating said group of the resources among operable resources on all said platforms when a resource stops operating.
A method of achieving fault tolerance in a call processing system, said call processing system comprising a plurality of call processing resources and at least two computer telephone servers, each of said servers containing one or more processors communicating with call processing applications and each of said resources, at least one of said processors having one or more primary functional components each of which carrying out a particular call processing function, the method comprising the steps of:
- providing on said processors of said servers standby functional components for said primary functional components such that each of said two servers contains at least one of said primary functional components and at least one of said standby functional components, and at least one of said primary functional components and its standby functional components are located in different servers;
- and
- keeping each of said standby functional components shadowed when its counterpart primary component operates properly and using said shadowed standby functional component when said primary component stops operating.
A method of achieving two-tier fault tolerance in a call processing system, said call processing system comprising a plurality of platforms containing call processing resources and one or more computer telephone servers for communicating with call processing applications and said platforms, each of said servers containing one or more processors communicating with said call processing applications and each of said platforms, each of said processors having one or more primary and/or standby functional components each of which carrying out a particular call processing function, the method comprising the steps of:
- providing on said processors of said servers a standby functional component for at least one of said primary functional components;
- keeping said standby functional component shadowed when its counterpart primary component operates properly and using said shadowed standby functional component when said primary component stops operating;
- and
- redirecting the load of the system among the available resources when a resource stops operating.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.