Centralized cell homing and load balancing in a base station controller

A network comprising a radio network controller (RNC), the RNC comprising:

• means for monitoring for a message of a connection between a user element and a network;
• means for determining whether the message is (i) a call set-up message from the user element or (ii) an allocation message from one of the processors;
• means for allocating one of the processors to the connection in accordance with a load balancing algorithm, if the message is an allocation message;
• and
• means for allocating a set of spreading codes to the connection with the same spreading factor and sending the set of spreading codes to a call-processing application on the processor that sent the allocation message, if the message is an allocation message.

A computer-readable medium having stored thereon a plurality of instructions, the plurality of instructions including instructions which, when executed by a computer, cause a processor to implement a method for allocating processing capacity of processors in a radio network controller, the method comprising the steps of:

• (a) monitoring for a message of a connection between a user element and a network;
• (b) determining whether the message is (i) a call set-up message from the user element or (ii) an allocation message from one of the processors;
• (c1) if the message is a call set-up message, then allocating one of the processors to the connection in accordance with a load-balancing algorithm;
• and
• (c2) if the message is an allocation message, then allocating a set of spreading codes to the connection with the same spreading factor and sending the set of spreading codes to a call-processing application on the processor that sent the allocation message.

A method of allocating processing capacity of processors in a radio network controller, the method comprising the steps of:

• monitoring for a message of a connection between a user element and a network;
• and
• allocating, if the message is a call set-up message, one of the processors to the connection in accordance with a load-balancing algorithm based on a call-context amount per Cpu load-balancing algorithm, wherein the call-context amount per CPU load-balancing algorithm comprises:
• determining an average number of calls per processor;
• weighting the average number of calls per processor by a total call capacity of the processor;
• and
• selecting the processor with the smallest weighted call average.