KR0154563B1 - Billing data treatment method in the catv system - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention provides a maintenance system for charging data generated for a channel watched by a CATV subscriber in an optical cable television (CATV) system (i.e., normal charging data or abnormal charging data generated in the event of an error or failure of the system). Is a method of processing billing data that is correctly collected and securely stored by the company to minimize the loss of billing data so that it can be provided later to program suppliers to ensure accurate billing for CATV subscribers. In the billing data generated for one channel, the maintenance system collects the basic billing data such as the subscriber's unique number and channel number, the viewing start time and the viewing end time, and checks for the loss of the billing data that may occur when transmitting safely. Minimize billing Increase the stability and reliability of the stored data, it is possible to calculate the exact charge to the CATV subscribers in the future provides such data to a program supplier it is possible to improve the utilization as a basis for the statistical data using CATV channel.

Description

Method of processing billing data in optical cable television (CATV) system

1 is an exemplary configuration diagram of an optical cable television (CATV) system to which the present invention is applied.

2 is an exemplary configuration diagram of the maintenance system of FIG.

3 is a flowchart illustrating an embodiment of a charging data processing method according to the present invention.

* Explanation of symbols for main parts of the drawings

1: headend 2: central station

3: distribution center 4: subscriber

The present invention provides a maintenance system for charging data generated for a channel watched by a CATV subscriber in an optical cable television (CATV) system (i.e., normal charging data or abnormal charging data generated in the event of an error or failure of the system). Is a method of processing billing data that can be correctly collected and securely stored by the company to minimize the loss of billing data so that it can be provided later to program suppliers so that accurate billing can be calculated for CATV subscribers.

In general, the CATV system has been recognized only to the extent that it has a broadcasting function in which a public antenna can be retransmitted using a coaxial cable or an in-house broadcast can be performed in a company or an office by setting up a common antenna in an astigmatism area at the introduction stage.

However, as the number of subscribers increases and various demands of users are accelerated, the necessity of introducing a new service and a bidirectional communication network capable of mutual information transfer rather than a one-way method are required.

The optical CATV system based on FTTH (Fiber To The Home) uses pure digital synchronous transmission method, not analog method, and communicates in high speed bi-directional rather than simple distribution, so subscribers can select the desired channel freely. In addition to providing the subscriber with the video distribution service that is the basic function of CATV, it is also possible to provide advanced information and communication services such as telephone, method / disaster prevention, and remote meter reading. In addition, it is possible to solve the problem of the astigmatism area and to provide a video service having a plurality of channels, high quality and high reliability.

In the related art, the billing data processing function in various systems implemented on a private network has less data processing, thereby satisfying relatively fast and accurate processing of billing data.

However, in the conventional billing data processing method in the optical CATV system that can satisfy various needs of users, the private switching network differs greatly from the hardware and development environment system in the implementation method, so that the control method is different and the large capacity of the CATV system Depending on the characteristics, billing data is lost when an unexpected network failure or system error occurs in a CATV system.

The present invention devised to solve the above problems, correctly collect and securely store the charging data generated for the channel watched by the CATV subscriber in the optical cable television (CATV) system using the shared memory in the maintenance system The purpose is to provide a billing data processing method to minimize the loss of billing data.

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a billing data processing method applied to an optical cable television (CATV) system, wherein the maintenance system is a billing data block for a viewing status of a subscriber subscribed to the cable television (CA) system. Collecting the same from the distribution center; A second step of the billing management process of the maintenance system configuring a billing database directory on a disk, extracting a node number, a serial number, and the number of billing data blocks from the received billing data blocks and temporarily storing them in a buffer; A third step of comparing the serial number stored temporarily in the buffer with the serial number recorded in the shared memory, deleting the buffer associated with the charging data block for the mismatched serial number, and requesting a retransmission to the distribution center; And a fourth step of verifying an error of the charging data block to generate a normal subscriber database according to the verification result, or to create an abnormal subscriber charging database, and to record the next serial number in the shared memory.

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

1 is an exemplary view of the configuration of an optical cable television (CATV) system to which the present invention is applied.

The applied optical cable television (CATV) system of the present invention includes a head end 1, a central station 2, a distribution center 3, and a subscriber 4, the head end 1 and the subscriber 4 in the house. All of the subscriber station 41 of the optical fiber (optical fiber) cable is configured.

The maximum accommodating subscriber of the optical CATV system as described above is 320,000 subscribers, and can accommodate up to eight central stations 2. Here, one central station 2 can accommodate up to 64 distribution centers 3, and one distribution center 3 can accommodate up to 1,024 subscribers 4.

The head end 1 includes a program providing system 11 incorporating a provided program, a TV and stereo encoder 12 encoding a program provided by the program providing system 11, and a transmission system for transmitting such an encoded program. It consists of (13).

The central station 2 is composed of the same transmission system 21 as the transmission system 11 of the headend 1 and a maintenance system 22 that manages the overall maintenance and operation management and billing data of the optical CATV system.

The distribution center 3 is the same transmission system 31 as the transmission systems 11 and 21 of the head end 1 and the central station 2, the broadband distribution system 32, the subscriber access device 33, and the maintenance communication. System 34.

The subscriber 4 is provided with a subscriber station 41 which can receive 32 TV video channels and 14 stereo music broadcasts in the home.

The operation of the optical CATV system having the configuration as described above is as follows.

The billing data generated in the optical CATV system is the normal billing data when the CATV subscriber selects a channel and watches it for a certain period of time, then changes to another channel or stops watching the channel. It can be classified as billing data, which is collected in the broadband distribution system 32 in the distribution center 3 upon the occurrence of the situation or upon termination.

For example, an optical CATV is charged to subscribers every month and provides free channels and paid channels, and pays a unilateral fee like a movie, unlike billing when connected like a regular telephone or packet network. In some cases, the pay channel may be viewed as a pay-per-view channel. In some cases, the subscriber only charges when the subscriber wants the channel and the viewing time based on contents provided by the operator, such as home shopping or video on demand (VOD).

Accordingly, for this case, CATV provides the subscriber with a free channel for a certain time, and the free viewing time is arbitrarily corrected by the CATV operator.

The broadband distribution system 32 configures the charging data field and reports it to the maintenance system 22 periodically when the collected charging data is collected in a predetermined number or more, and the maintenance system 22 checks the hard disk or the It collects and stores billing data just like regular billing data by accurately storing it in auxiliary storage or requiring the transfer of occasional billing data to the broadband distribution system 32 for settlement or special purposes.

As described above, the present invention relates to a billing data field in order to minimize the loss of billing data that may occur during transmission and reception of billing data with the broadband distribution system 32 when collecting and storing billing data in the maintenance system 22. Give a number.

In the operation of the billing system when the serial number is used, the loss of billing data and control data transmitted / received between the billing process and the broadband distribution system 32 at all times regardless of the communication process or the billing process through the serial number. To prevent this, use shared memory, one of the methods of communication between processors. In addition, in order to receive the occasional billing data separately from the periodic billing data transmission, an occasional billing data transmission request command is sent to the broadband distribution system 32 at a predetermined time.

Therefore, the charging data blocks of the broadband distribution system 32 are collected by the maintenance system 22 when certain blocks are collected and stored in a disk by designating a specific area, and separately a secondary storage device tape for the safety and reliability of the data. Are stored in.

FIG. 2 is an exemplary configuration diagram of the maintenance system of FIG. 1 and shows the configuration of the maintenance system 22 for collecting and storing charging data of the optical CATV system.

The billing data is collected by a certain block in the distribution center 3 via the optical cable after the billing data generated for the channel watched by the subscriber 4 through the communication matching board 201 and the local area network (LAN). Sent to maintenance system 22.

The maintenance system 22 consists of a LAN communication process 221, a charging process 222, and other processes 223.

LAN communication process 221 stores charging data along with other maintenance messages in a particular message queue.

The billing management process 222, like other processors 223 required in the maintenance system 22, reads only the message with the number corresponding to the billing data from the message queue by the interprocess communication method and stores it in the billing buffer.

At this time, the billing management process 222 allocates a unique number of serial numbers to one distribution center 3 and assigns a series of periodic billing data blocks and irregular billing data blocks transmitted from the distribution center 3 to the corresponding series. When receiving according to the number, if there is no error in the number of billing data blocks, the total length of the billing data blocks, etc., the corresponding serial number billing data block is found in the shared memory location indicating the serial number, and the billing is performed in the distribution center 3. Notify that the data block was received correctly.

On the other hand, if there is an error in the charging data block collected from the distribution center 3, the charging management process 222 records the number of failures in the shared memory location corresponding to the serial number and reports the situation to a specific place on the disk 202. After recording to the error recording file, the distribution center 3 is requested to retransmit the charging data block. At this time, the number of retransmission requests between the charge management process 222 and the distribution center 3 for a failure is limited to three times.

The billing management process 22 collects the billing data blocks from the distribution center 3 and stores them on the disk 202 or the backup tape 203 which is an auxiliary storage device. Since no data is included, information about a node number is obtained from the LAN communication processor 221.

At this time, the node number obtained by the LAN communication processor 16 is the minimum recording unit to be stored in the disk 202 or the backup tape 203 which is an auxiliary storage device together with the charging table block transmitted from the distribution center 3, and the corresponding subscriber ( 4) Node number (4 bytes), subscriber number (1 byte), channel number (1 byte) indicating the central station (2) and distribution center (3) to which it belongs; Displayed viewing start time (5 bytes) and viewing end time (5 bytes).

3 is a flow chart of an embodiment of a billing data processing method according to the present invention, in which the maintenance system 22 collects and collects a billing data block on the viewing status of subscribers subscribed to the CA system from the distribution center 3. Represents a procedure for processing a billing data.

In the present invention, the maintenance system 22 in the central station 2 stores the charging data blocks transmitted from the distribution center 3 of the optical CATV, and the serial number of the charging data blocks is stored in the inter-process communication method of UNIX. One of them is shared memory (Shred Memory), which is processed and stored more safely and reliably.

Native memory is where two or more processes share data in a particular memory segment, making it the fastest means of Unix interprocess communication (IPC).

First, the billing management process 222 extracts only the year and month of the year, month, day, hour, minute, and second values of the time of the UNIX system and the subscriber billing database on the disk 202. In step 301, a directory to be recorded is configured. At this time, if the directory or file already exists, the charging data received in the directory is continuously added without creating a directory.

Thereafter, upon receipt of the charging data block from the message queue configured by the LAN communication process 221, a node number (Node No.), a serial number, which can know the unique numbers of the corresponding central station 2 and the distribution center 3, And after temporarily storing the number of charging data blocks in the buffer (302). It is analyzed whether the serial number temporarily stored in the buffer matches the serial number recorded in the shared memory (303).

As a result of the analysis, if the billing data block is matched (304), it is determined whether an error occurs in the verified billing data block (305). That is, it is determined whether the number of charging data blocks and the length of the transmitted charging data match the values calculated by the charging management process 222.

As a result of the analysis, if the serial number does not match the value recorded in the shared memory, the buffer associated with the corresponding billing data block is deleted, a negative response (NAK) is processed along with the serial number, and the data is transmitted to the distribution center 3 again. 312).

As a result of determination, if the number of billing data blocks and the length of the billing data transmitted coincide with the value calculated by the billing management process 222, the node number is inserted into the subscriber billing data and temporarily stored in the memory until a certain number is configured. After a certain number of times, the data is recorded on the disk 202 (306).

Subsequently, the result of processing the billing data block is an acknowledgment (ACK) with a serial number, requesting to send a new billing data block to the distribution center 3 (307), and the corresponding distribution center received so far in the shared memory. Record the next serial number from (3) (308). Here, the serial number is cyclic, and if the serial number is from 0 to 99, it starts from 0 and becomes 99 again when it reaches 99.

As a result of the determination, if the number of charging data blocks and the length of the transmitted charging data do not match the value calculated by the charging management process 222, a failure occurs, and it is checked whether the number of failures is three or more times (309). This is because the number of inspections (that is, three times) limits the number of retransmission requests to the distribution center 3 to the above three times.

As a result of the inspection, if a failure occurs three or more times in the same serial number, a log file for failure is created (310). After the abnormal charging database is separately configured and recorded (311), the next serial number from the corresponding distribution center 3 thus far received is recorded in the shared memory (308).

As a result of the inspection, if a failure occurs less than three times of the serial number, the buffer associated with the corresponding billing data block is deleted, a negative response (NAK) is processed along with the corresponding serial number, and is required to be retransmitted to the distribution center 3 (312).

In the present invention as described above, the billing data generated for the channels watched by subscribers subscribed to CATV, the basic billing material such as the number and channel number corresponding to the subscriber's unique number, viewing start time and viewing end time in the maintenance system Can correctly collect, securely store, and minimize the loss of billing data that can occur during transmission to increase stability and reliability in the storage of billing data, and to provide these data to program suppliers later to calculate accurate billing for CATV subscribers. As a basic statistical data on the use of CATV channels, it can increase the utilization.

The present invention described above is capable of various substitutions, modifications, and changes without departing from the spirit of the present invention for those skilled in the art to which the present invention pertains. It is not limited to the drawing.

Claims (5)

CLAIMS 1. A billing data processing method applied to an optical cable television (CATV) system, the method comprising: a first step of a maintenance system collecting from a distribution center a billing data block of a subscriber's viewing status subscribed to the cable television system; A second step of the billing management process of the maintenance system configuring a billing database directory on a disk, extracting a node number, a serial number, and the number of billing data blocks from the received billing data blocks and temporarily storing them in a buffer; A third step of comparing the serial number stored temporarily in the buffer with the serial number recorded in the shared memory, deleting the buffer associated with the charging data block for the mismatched serial number, and requesting a retransmission to the distribution center; And a fourth step of verifying an error of the billing data block to generate a normal presser database according to the verification result, or to create an abnormal subscriber billing database and to record the next serial number in the shared memory. The billing data processing method applied to the (CATV) system. The method of claim 1, wherein the third step comprises: a fifth step of analyzing whether the serial number temporarily stored in the buffer matches the serial number recorded in the shared memory; And if the serial number does not match the value recorded in the shared memory as a result of the analysis in the fifth step, deletes the buffer associated with the corresponding billing data block, and processes the negative response with the serial number to the distribution center. 6. A billing data processing method applied to an optical cable television (CATV) system comprising a sixth step that requires retransmission and, if there is a match, goes to the fourth step. According to claim 1 or claim 2, wherein the fourth step, the analysis result of the fifth step, if the match, the billing data block is verified, the number of billing data blocks and the length of the billing data transmitted is calculated in the billing management process; A seventh step of determining whether the value matches; As a result of the determination of the seventh step, if a match is found, a corresponding node number is inserted into the subscriber billing data, and temporarily stored in the shared memory, and when a certain number is reached, the data is written to a disk, and then the result of the processing is ACKed along with the serial number. An eighth step of requesting to send a new billing data block to the distribution center; A ninth step of recording the next serial number from the corresponding distribution center so far received in the shared memory; A tenth step of checking whether the number of failures exceeds a predetermined number of times when the determination result of the seventh step does not match; An eleventh step of creating a log file for a failure if a predetermined number of failures occur in the same serial number as a result of the tenth step, and writing an abnormal billing database separately and then skipping to the ninth step; And if the error of less than the predetermined number of times occurs in the same serial number, delete the buffer associated with the corresponding billing data block, process the negative response with the corresponding serial number, and retransmit it to the distribution center. A billing data processing method applied to an optical cable television (CATV) system comprising a twelfth step requiring to be made. The charging database of claim 3, wherein the charging database of the second step is performed. A billing data processing method applied to an optical cable television (CATV) system, wherein if the directory or file already exists, the received billing data is continuously added without creating a new directory. The billing data processing method according to claim 1, wherein the serial numbers are assigned in a cyclic manner, respectively.