KR101411001B1 - system and method for service status monitoring of customer - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a service status monitoring system and method of a customer.

According to the present invention, the service status monitoring system collects channel join or leave information of a receiving terminal that receives a channel service of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), and transmits the collected information to a service registration Maps the information and reconstructs it as the viewing status information. Then, based on the viewing status information, the user's taste or interest is analyzed to generate customer orientation information, and viewer rating information according to the customer's channel viewing is generated.

The customer orientation information or the audience rating information is provided to a network management system through a graphical user interface (GUI), thereby providing a service that matches the propensity or interest of the customer.

IPTV, Multicast, IGMP

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a system and method for monitoring customer service status,

The present invention relates to a service status monitoring system and method of a customer. In particular, the present invention relates to a technology for identifying and managing a service status of a customer through network equipment when providing a multicast-based service such as IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) channel service in an IP multicast network will be.

Among IP network-based services such as IPTV, real-time channel services are provided in a multicast manner. In an Internet Protocol Multicast (IP Multicast) network, multicast is different from unicast, and when a request for a plurality of subscribers (hereinafter referred to as "customer" And transmit it to a plurality of subscribers. Therefore, the multicast based service has an advantage of effectively reducing the load of the transmission server and utilization of the network resource.

On the other hand, the NMS (Network Management System) that manages the network of the service should be able to grasp the situation of the service to the customer such as monitoring whether the transmission of the traffic to the customer is desired and receiving the service requested by the actual customer . That is, there is a need to provide a convenient service and a service to the customer by detecting the channel status of the customer and detecting the service status and the status of the customer. However, since the multicast traffic delivery path is monitored using the multicast tree information of the router or the L3 switch (hereinafter referred to as L3) as the network equipment, only the multicast route from the headend center to the L3 can be grasped, The confirmation of the requested channel is a disadvantage in L3. In other words, in order to calculate statistical data such as customer orientation analysis and audience rating according to the service status of the customer in the NMS, information such as the usage status of the service by the customer and the viewing status by the time zone is required. There is a problem.

Accordingly, in order to solve the above problems, the present invention provides a system and method for providing a multicast-based service such as IPTV channel service, And a service status monitoring system and method for generating a service status monitoring service.

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a customer service status monitoring system,

A channel information collecting unit for collecting Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping information from a switch connected to a receiving terminal that receives a channel service of IPTV (Internet Protocol Television); A viewing status processing unit for mapping the information collected by the channel information collecting unit and the service registration information of the customer to reconstitute the information as the viewing status information; A customer orientation analyzer for analyzing a taste or a field of interest of the customer based on the viewing status information and generating customer orientation information; And an audience rating analyzing unit for analyzing the viewing status information and generating audience rating information according to the channel viewing of the customer.

The system further includes a service status providing unit for providing the customer orientation information or the audience rating information to the network management system via a GUI (Graphical User Interface).

Meanwhile, a service status monitoring system according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention monitors a service status of a customer,

a) collecting Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping information from a switch connected to a receiving terminal that receives a channel service of IPTV (Internet Protocol Television); b) reconfiguring the collected information by mapping the service registration information of the customer to the viewing status information; c) generating customer orientation information by analyzing a customer's taste or area of interest based on the viewing status information; And d) analyzing the viewing status information to generate time information or audience rating information for each channel according to a channel viewing of the customer.

And e) providing the customer orientation information or the audience rating information through a graphical user interface (GUI) when requested by the network management system.

According to the above-described configuration, the customer orientation information is generated based on the service viewing status of the customer to develop contents meeting the customer's taste or interest, or an electronic program guide (EPG) It is effective.

Also, it is expected to provide a variety of reliable ratings based on information on the time or channel or on the basis of the customer's receiving area, age, occupation, channel, and program propensity based on the service viewing status of the customer.

In addition, by providing the service status information of the customer to the operator, the service status of the customer can be actively grasped and coped with when the customer requests the service.

Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings so that those skilled in the art can easily carry out the present invention. The present invention may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein. In order to clearly illustrate the present invention, parts not related to the description are omitted, and similar parts are denoted by like reference characters throughout the specification.

Throughout the specification, when an element is referred to as "comprising ", it means that it can include other elements as well, without excluding other elements unless specifically stated otherwise. Also, the terms " part, "" module," and " module ", etc. in the specification mean a unit for processing at least one function or operation and may be implemented by hardware or software or a combination of hardware and software have.

Now, a customer service status monitoring system and method according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

1 is a network configuration diagram illustrating a multicast traffic flow according to an embodiment of the present invention.

1, a network configuration for providing a multicast service according to an embodiment of the present invention includes a head-end center, a backbone network, an access network, and a customer premises And a receiving terminal 10 (set-top boxes)

The backbone network and the access network include various routers and switches for channel transmission, and the service status monitoring system 100 is included in or linked to a network management system (NMS) and manages various devices in the network do.

Particularly, the service status monitoring system 100 according to the present invention has connection information between a customer's receiving terminal 10 and an L2 switch, and is provided with channel join information for each port to which the receiving terminal 10 of the customer is connected, And collects the customer's service viewing status. Also, it has a feature of generating statistical data such as customer propensity analysis, audience rating, etc. using the collected data. The service status monitoring system 100 will be described later.

The access network connected to the receiving terminal 10 installed in the customer premises includes an L3 switch (L3) and a L2 switch (L2).

L3 is a device operating in the network layer that receives a router in a switch, and forwards the channel received from the upper router to the L2 with an IP address.

L2 is a general switch that operates at the data link layer and meets the bandwidth demand by dividing the LAN by media sharing into several segments with independent bandwidth. Therefore, it is responsible for forwarding the channel received from L3 to the customer receiving equipment connected through a plurality of ports.

As described above, real-time channel service among IP network-based services such as IPTV is provided in a multicast manner. The real-time channel service provides a channel stream from the headend center to the receiving terminal 10 of the customer in a multicast manner in the IP network.

In this case, the multicasting protocol used in IPTV uses Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) in the backbone network and the access network, and Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) and the Snooping Protocol (IGMP) in the customer premises receiving equipment. Here, PIM is a routing protocol that enables protocol-independent multicast routing on a large network. The IGMP is a signal control protocol for determining which multicast group the hosts belonging to the L3 belong to in the access network.

According to the embodiment of the present invention, as shown in FIG. 1, from the L3 connected to the customer premises receiving terminal 10 to the front end router of the head end center, the PIM is driven to perform multicast routing and packet forwarding. Then, the IGMP protocol operates to the receiving terminals 10 and L3 of the customer to join or leave (Join or Leave) the actual channel. Hereinafter, a channel has the same meaning as a multicast group, and one channel has one multicast group.

In other words, multicast traffic comes down to a group of customers requesting a particular channel as a traffic stream from the front-end center router to L3. Then, the customer's receiving terminal 10 requests L3 to join or leave a specific channel, and connects or disconnects a port for the corresponding channel in L2, which monitors it. At this time, the function of L2 to monitor the join or leave message is referred to as IGMP snooping.

L3 periodically transmits an IGMP Query message to the receiving terminals 10 to confirm whether there is a receiving terminal 10 of a customer who wants to participate in a specific group. Then, the receiving terminal 10 requests a group address to which the receiving terminal 10 wishes to join through a response thereto. In addition, the customer's receiving terminal 10 may transmit the join or leave message to L3 without an IGMP query message.

2, a customer service status monitoring system according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described.

2 is a block diagram schematically illustrating a service status monitoring system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

2, a customer service status monitoring system 100 according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention includes a channel information collecting unit 110, a viewing status processing unit 120, a customer propensity analyzing unit 130, A service status providing unit 150 and a database unit 160. The database unit 160 includes a facility DB 161, a customer information DB 162, a channel information DB 163, A status DB 164, a customer orientation DB 165, and an audience rating DB 166. [

The channel information collecting unit 110 periodically collects IGMP snooping information from L2 through a Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and transmits the collected information to the viewing status processing unit 120. [ At this time, the channel information collecting unit 110 may collect the MAC address of the receiving terminal 10 of the customer, the port connected to the L2, and the subscription or withdrawal information to the specific channel using the SNMP according to the collection period set by the operator . Hereinafter, the MAC address collected by the channel information collecting unit 110, the port connected to L2, and the subscription or withdrawal information for a specific channel are collectively referred to as collecting information.

In addition, the channel information collecting unit 110 collects collected information about the receiving terminal 10 of a specific customer according to an operator request of the NMS, or collects collected information of all customers subscribed to a specific channel at any time.

The viewing status processing unit 120 maps the collected information received from the channel information collecting unit 110, the customer information, the facility information, and the channel information, and reconstructs the information as the viewing status information. The customer information, the facility information, and the channel information are extracted from the customer information DB 162, the facility DB 161, and the channel information DB 163 of the database unit 160, respectively. Then, the viewing status processing unit 120 confirms connection information, channel, and IP address mapping information between the customer receiving terminal 10 and the L2 based on the collected information and the extracted information. Then, the viewing status according to the channel information of the customer is reconstructed and stored in the viewing status DB 164 of the database unit 160 for each collection time period.

The customer propensity analyzer 130 analyzes the taste or the interest field of the customer's channel based on the reconstructed viewing condition in the viewing condition processing unit 120 to generate the customer propensity table.

3 is a block diagram schematically illustrating a customer orientation table according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 3, the customer orientation table according to the embodiment of the present invention is divided into customer information and customer channel viewing information. The customer information includes information such as the customer's name, the MAC address of the receiving terminal 10, the receiving area (residence), the age, the occupation, and the like. Here, the information according to the service type is information classified into a general receiver, a premium receiver, or the like, or supplementary service subscription information subscribed to a specific pay channel. The customer's channel viewing information includes the collection date, the day of the week, the subscription time, the withdrawal time, the channel, the program tendency of the channel, the preference information by time or channel.

As described above, the customer orientation analyzer 130 according to the present invention generates customer orientation information based on the customer's viewing status, thereby providing basic data for the IPTV provider to provide the additional service according to the customer's preference. For example, it is possible to develop contents of a customer's taste or interest, or to generate and provide an electronic program guide (EPG) in accordance with customer-oriented tendencies.

The audience rating analyzing unit 140 analyzes the audience rating according to the viewing of the channel of the customer on the basis of the viewing status reconstructed in the viewing status processing unit 120 to generate an audience rating table.

4 is a block diagram schematically illustrating an audience rating table according to an embodiment of the present invention.

4, an audience rating table according to an embodiment of the present invention is data on a customer's per-channel join rate according to a specific collection time, and includes a collection date, a collection time, a customer's name, The MAC address, the reception area (residence), the age, the occupation, the subscription channel, the program propensity, and the channel-specific viewership. Such an audience rating table may be generated every time the collected information is collected in the channel information collecting unit 110, or may be generated according to a request of the MNS operator. For example, when the MNS operator receives an inquiry about a channel failure occurring while receiving an IPTV service from a specific customer, it is characterized by actively grasping the latest reception channel of the customer and a failure of the channel to support flexible reception have.

In addition, the audience rating table generated by the audience rating analyzer 140 is not limited to the above-described FIG. 4, and the audience rating can be calculated based on various information such as reception area, age, occupation, channel, have.

The service status provider 150 provides the operator with various data collected or generated by the service status monitoring system 100 through a GUI (Graphical User Interface). In particular, it provides the IPTV service to the MNS, which manages the IPTV service, so that it can be utilized as basic data for IPTV channel service or network operation.

The facility DB 161 of the database unit 160 has facility information and link information for all the network elements in the network and the customer information DB 162 has a customer name registered at the time of subscribing to the IPTV service, The MAC address, the reception area, the age, the occupation, and the service type of the terminal 10 are stored. The channel information DB 163 stores multicast group IP information for each channel and the viewing status DB 164 stores the viewing status information processed by the viewing status processing unit 120. The customer preference DB 165 stores customer- The customer orientation information generated by the analysis unit 130 is stored. The audience rating DB 166 stores the audience rating information generated by the audience rating analyzer 140.

A service status monitoring method according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG.

5 is a flowchart illustrating a service status monitoring method according to an embodiment of the present invention.

5, the channel information collecting unit 110 of the service status monitoring system 100 periodically accesses the equipment L2 to collect IGMP snooping information and transmits the received information to the viewing status processing unit 120, (S510). The viewing status processing unit 120 stores the received collected information and L2 connection information, channel information, and customer information in the facility DB 161, the customer information DB 162, and the channel information DB 163 of the database unit 160, respectively (S520), builds view-by-view status information for each customer, and stores it in the view status DB 164 (S530).

The customer propensity analyzer 130 of the service status monitoring system 100 analyzes the audience status of each customer stored in the audience status DB 164 and analyzes the taste or the interest field according to the customer's channel viewing to generate customer propensity information (S540).

In addition, the audience rating analyzer 140 of the service status monitoring system 100 generates the audience rating information according to the channel viewing time or the channel based on the reconstructed viewing status in the viewing status processor 120 (S550).

A method of providing service status information by the service status monitoring system 100 according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG.

6 is a flowchart illustrating a method of providing service status information by a service status monitoring system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 6, the service status monitoring system 100 according to the embodiment of the present invention receives a service status information request from an operator of an NMS in a network providing IPTV (S610). The service status monitoring system 100 may provide a GUI to the operator of the NMS and receive a service status information request through a keyword search condition.

In operation S620, the service status monitoring system 100 determines whether the received service status information request is customer orientation information, and if the customer orientation information is correct, generates the customer orientation information corresponding to the keyword search condition in operation S630. , And provides it to the operator of the NMS (S660).

On the other hand, if it is determined in step S620 that the information is not the customer orientation information, it is determined whether the request of the operator of the NMS is the rating information (S640). If the audience rating information is correct, audience rating information corresponding to the keyword search condition is generated (S650) and provided to the operator of the NMS (S660).

The embodiments of the present invention are not limited to the above-described apparatuses and / or methods, but may be implemented through a program for realizing functions corresponding to the configuration of the embodiment of the present invention, a recording medium on which the program is recorded And such an embodiment can be easily implemented by those skilled in the art from the description of the embodiments described above.

While the present invention has been particularly shown and described with reference to exemplary embodiments thereof, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to the disclosed exemplary embodiments, It belongs to the scope of right.

1 is a network configuration diagram illustrating a multicast traffic flow according to an embodiment of the present invention.

2 is a block diagram schematically illustrating a service status monitoring system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

3 is a block diagram schematically illustrating a customer orientation table according to an embodiment of the present invention.

4 is a block diagram schematically illustrating an audience rating table according to an embodiment of the present invention.

5 is a flowchart illustrating a service status monitoring method according to an embodiment of the present invention.

6 is a flowchart illustrating a method of providing service status information by a service status monitoring system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Claims (13)

A channel information collecting unit for collecting Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping information from a switch connected to a receiving terminal that receives a channel service of IPTV (Internet Protocol Television); A viewing status processing unit for mapping the information collected by the channel information collecting unit and the service registration information of the customer to reconstitute the information as the viewing status information; A customer orientation analyzer for analyzing a taste or a field of interest of the customer based on the viewing status information and generating customer orientation information; And And an audience rating analyzing unit for analyzing the viewing status information and generating audience rating information according to a customer's channel viewing, The customer orientation analyzer generates the customer orientation information using the collected information and the program propensity information that is specified for each channel among the service registration information of the customer A service status monitoring system. The method according to claim 1, And a service status providing unit for providing the customer orientation information or the audience rating information to a network management system via a GUI (Graphical User Interface). 3. The method according to claim 1 or 2, The channel information collecting unit, And collects channel join or leave information of the receiving terminal using a Simple Network Management Protocol according to the collection period set by the operator. system. The method of claim 3, The snooping information includes: A MAC address of the receiving terminal, port information of a switch, and joining or leaving information on a specific channel. The method according to claim 1, The customer orientation information may include: Information on at least one of a customer name, a MAC address of the receiving terminal, a receiving area, an age, a job, a collecting day, a day, a joining time, a leaving time, a channel, a program tendency of a channel, Service status monitoring system. The method according to claim 1, The audience rating information includes: Wherein the service status monitoring system includes at least one of a collection date, a collection time, a customer name, a MAC address of a receiving terminal, a receiving area, an age, a job, a subscription channel, a program propensity and an audience rating by channel. The method according to claim 6, The audience rating information includes: Based on at least one of information by time, channel, reception area, gender, age, occupation, and program propensity. In a method for monitoring service status of a customer, a) collecting Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping information from a switch connected to a receiving terminal that receives a channel service of an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV); b) reconfiguring the collected information by mapping the service registration information of the customer to the viewing status information; c) generating customer orientation information by analyzing a customer's taste or area of interest based on the viewing status information; And d) analyzing the viewing status information and generating time information or audience rating information for each channel according to the viewing of the channel of the customer, The customer orientation information is generated using program orientation information that is specified for each channel among the collected information and the service registration information of the customer The service status monitoring method comprising: 9. The method of claim 8, and e) providing the customer preference information or the audience rating information through a graphical user interface (GUI) when requested by the network management system. 9. The method of claim 8, The step a) And collecting at least one of a MAC address of the receiving terminal, port information connected to the switch, and joining or leaving information to a specific channel. 11. The method of claim 10, The step c) Information including at least one of the customer name, the MAC address of the receiving terminal, the receiving area, the customer's age, occupation, collection date, day of the week, subscription time, withdrawal time, channel, program propensity of the channel, And generating customer orientation information. 12. The method of claim 11, The step d) The audience rating information including at least one of a gathering date, a gathering time, a customer name, a MAC address of a receiving terminal, a receiving area, an age, a job, a subscription channel, a program propensity and an audience rating for each channel is generated . A recording medium on which a program for executing the method of any one of claims 8 to 12 is stored.

Images