RLP router

Abstract

A practical inter-carrier roaming solution by way of a roaming location protocol (RLP) router that provides consistent location support across heterogeneous wireless network standards. The RLP router maintains connectivity to each location server in a roaming ecosystem, alleviating the need for an expensive and impractical mesh network of location servers. When a home location server (H-LS) determines it cannot locate a subscriber device because the subscriber device is roaming, the H-LS sends an RLP request to the RLP router. The RLP router then routes the RLP request to a serving location server (S-LS), which subsequently returns location information for the roaming subscriber device. The RLP router maintains mobile switching center ID (MSCID) to location based services (LBS) mappings for routing RLP requests. The RLP router may also maintain rough MSC-level positioning data for each MSCID to enable the RLP router to resolve certain location fixes without utilizing an S-LS.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.