MXPA00007273A - Call setup for ip/internet telephony - Google Patents

Abstract

A method for setting up a voice call over an IP network is described. The method first initiates an IP voice call to a called device connected to a telephone line. The method then determines whether the called device is already connected to the IP network. If the called device is not already connected to the IP network based on the determining step, the method will initiate a telephone call with an associated telephone signal through the telephone line to the called device, to alert the called device that an IP voice call is pending.

Description

ESTABLISHMENT OF A CALL FOR IP / INTERNET TELEPHONY FIELD OF THE I NVEN C ION The present invention relates generally to a method for providing a voice connection in an I P (Internet Protocol) network such as the Internet. In particular, the present invention relates to a method of setting up automatic call and call notification using distinctive ring patterns or caller ID information. BACKGROUND OF THE I NVENTION One of the main reasons of interest in offering IP / Internet telephony services are the price structures that are currently available for the data service, as well as for the voice service offered by telephone operators. The long distance voice service can be considered as a "data demand" service, where the user pays a premium for instant access to a 64 Kbps channel (voice grade channel in the United States of America) . Widely publicized, the promotional prices for this service are of the order of $. 10 the minute. Conversely, the data service offered by telephone operators, such as that offered for a T-1 connection (24 voice quality data lines, for a 1.544 Mbps connection) is priced at approximately $ 1000 per month, which means $ .001 per minute per voice line. In the near future, cable operators will put heavy pressure on even data service rates for telephone operators, and cable modems will allow cable operators to offer hundreds of effective Kbps of output for approximately $ 50 per month. The Internet Protocol telephony is also one of the most visible first steps towards an Integrated Services Internet, which transports video voice and data in real time. The basic idea of Internet / Internet Protocol voice telephony is to digitize the voice as spoken on the telephone and send the digitized data as Internet Protocol packets to the Internet. An Internet Protocol speech device may be inserted into an Internet connection device such as a modem, a box on top of the apparatus, or a computer. It can also be built as a stand-alone product. For example, the autonomous Internet Protocol speech device may provide an Ethernet connection that may be connected to an Internet connection device and other Local Area Network (LAN) devices. The Internet Protocol voice device may also include interfaces for connecting regular telephone sets. The quality of the speech heard through a normal telephone line requires a bandwidth of 64kbit / s. However, most current Internet connections have less bandwidth, such as a 28.8kBPS or 56kBPS modem. Additionally, even if a fast connection device such as an ISDN, or Cable Modem, is used, the Internet network itself is a shared medium and has limited bandwidth. Therefore, audio encoders-decoders are commonly inserted to compress the voice data. To ensure interoperability between Internet Protocol voice devices from different providers, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) developed H.323 as the telephony standard over the Internet Protocol network. H.332 defines common procedures for call setup, data compression, and data transport. H .323 is a general standard that references many other recommendations of the ITU. Establishes several levels of multimedia communications. These levels include only voice, voice and video, voice and data, or voice, video and data communications in a local area network. The voice-only H.332 protocol stack includes RTP / RTCP, RAS / Q.931 (H.225.0), and H.245. RTP / RTCP is used for packet formation and voice data synchronization. RAS / Q .931 describes the registry, admission and call status as well as the signaling of the call. H.2245 defines the messages and control procedures. In a general sense, Internet Protocol telephony can be considered as providing a "virtual" point-to-point connection for voice services on the Internet. Several Internet Protocol telephony devices currently exist in the market. Some examples include VocalTec® Internet Phone® Lite which is a software product used in a personal multimedia computer, produced by VocalTech Corporation of Northvale, NJ. Other product examples include Netscape's CoolTalk or Microsoft's NetMeeting. Most of these software-based products reside on a client server such as a personal computer or a network (NC) computer that requires a microphone, speaker and a sound card. Other products come in the form of a headset, which basically incorporates the function of the microphone and speaker in the software-based product. As an example of how to make a call, it should be assumed that a user in Indianapolis wants to call his friend in Paris. He would lift his headset from the Internet Protocol voice device (or a virtual headset on the computer screen) and he will hear a dial tone as a regular telephone dial tone. Then, he dials his friend's phone number in Paris. The call travels on the Internet to a server provided by the Internet Protocol telephony service provider. The server will connect the call to your friend's Internet Protocol voice device and initiate the call. If your friend only has a regular telephone, the server will connect the call to a gate in Paris. Then, the gate in Paris initiates a call on the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to the local number in Paris. Depending on Internet connections, there are basically two methods for making calls using an Internet Protocol voice device: dial-up connections and direct connections.

With a dial-up connection, a user first calls an ISP (Internet service provider) on a regular dialing line to establish an Internet connection. Then, he will use the Internet Protocol voice device headset to dial the phone number of the person he is calling. With a permanent or direct connection, a user makes a call using the Internet Protocol voice device in the same way as he does with the regular telephone. The direct connection indicates a permanent open channel to the Internet such as ISDNm or a cable access device. For a dial-up connection call, a called phone will not ring unless the Internet connection is already established for this phone. For a direct connection call, a telephone would ring like a normal telephone. European Patent Application, EP-A-0781016, discloses a known Internet telephone system. The disclosed system allows a server connected to a device called to use the telephone number of the telephone line connected to the called device to establish the Internet telephone call. However, there are still needed ways that can be carried out efficiently and easily to distinguish whether a call to the called device is an Internet call or a normal telephone call, so that the call can be handled correctly and automatically. . BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE I NVENCTION The present applicants recognize that a problem of using dial-up connections to provide Internet Protocol telephony is that the recipient or the called party of an Internet call must be online. waiting for the Internet Protocol call. Therefore, the caller (or caller) will have to call the receiver first using a regular PSTN phone to make the appointment in advance so that the called party is connected to the Internet when it arrives. the Internet call. This defeats the purpose of eliminating the regular telephone call to save money and resources.

Therefore, a need has been recognized to provide a method that automatically establishes the Internet connection for the Internet Protocol voice receiver device if it is not online. Therefore, a method is described for establishing a voice call 30 in an Internet Protocol network comprising the steps of: Initiating an Internet Protocol voice call to a called device connected to a telephone line; Determine if the called device is connected to the Internet Protocol network; and Initiate a telephone call with a telephone signal associated through the telephone line to the called device in response to the call of the called device not being connected to the network of Internet Protocol as determined in the determination step.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DIAMETERS Figure 1 is a block diagram of an exemplary system embodying the principles of the present invention. Figure 2 is a flow chart illustrating a method of operating the system shown in Figure 1. DESCR I I DETAILED PC OF THE I NVENTION In Figure 1, there are two homes 5 and 10, each with a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) device 15 and 16. As mentioned earlier, this device can be one of the different devices available in the market today. The Voice over Internet Protocol devices 15 and 16 are each connected to a client server 17 or 18 respectively, which, for example, can be a personal computer or a network computer, serving as a guest client for connection to Internet. As mentioned above and as those skilled in the art will readily recognize, the combination of a Voice over Internet Protocol device 15 or 16 and a client server 17 or 18 can be replaced by a personal multimedia computer with a microphone, speaker , a sound card and an appropriate Voice over Internet Protocol software. The client server 17 or 18 is each connected to the POTS network (Old and Simple Telephone Service) or to the PSTN (Public Services Telephone Network) 30 through dial-up telephone lines as mentioned above.

An exemplary process of automatically establishing an Internet call is shown in Figure 2. As shown in Step 205 of Figure 2, a calling party in home 5 first initiates a Voice over Internet Protocol call to a party. which is called in the home 10. In the dialing configuration of Figure 1, the client server 17 will first have to be connected to the Internet 40. An exemplary manner in which the client server 17 can be connected to the Internet 40 is for the caller to manually call their Internet service provider 35 using a modem (not shown) on the client server 17. This process of connecting to the Internet service provider can also be automated using the software of the Internet. client server in response to calling the Voice over Internet Protocol 15 device to initiate an Internet call. Once the calling party is on the Internet through the Internet service provider, you can then request a Voice over Internet Protocol connection to a particular device on the Internet. The calling party can do this by providing an Internet Protocol address of the called party with whom it wishes to make an Internet telephone connection. This Internet Protocol address of the called party is first transmitted to the owner server 37 of the Internet service provider 35. The owner server 37 will then attempt to make an Internet Protocol connection to the Voice over Protocol device. Internet of the part that is called, for example, 16 in the home 10. The owner server 37 will attempt to make this connection by first making a connection to the far-end owner server, for example, the owner server 38, which services the Voice over Internet Protocol device of the called party 16 and the server associated customer 18 at home 10. As shown in Step 210, when the Voice call Upon Internet Protocol arrives at the owner server 38 serving the Internet Protocol device named 18, the owner server 38 can determine the online status of the target client server 18, since the owner server 38 is aware of the online status of all the units it serves. In Steps 215 and 216, if the client device called 18 is already online, the owner server 18 will proceed with the connection of the Voice over Internet Protocol call between the source and destination client servers 17 and 18. The destination client server 18 will then generate a special Internet Protocol signal or bell to alert the called party that an Internet Protocol telephone call is entering. If the client server 18 is offline as determined in Step 215, the owner server 38 will send a message back to the calling party indicating the lack of immediate availability of the client server 18 and optionally request the The party calls an estimated timeout to establish the connection, as shown in Step 220. Thereafter, the server initiates a call to the party called on the PSTN 30. This will generate a special signal that will be described to following in detail to the receiver client server device 18 and the regular receiving telephones. This signal will be recognized as an Internet call set-up signal instead of a regular telephone ring signal. After the client server device 18 recognizes this call set-up signal, it will dial the Internet service provider 40 to establish the Internet connection. When the Internet connection is successfully established, the receiving client server device 18 will send an acknowledgment message to the owner server 37 and a communication channel will be established between the calling party and the called party. If after a specified time, the calling client server 17 has not received an acknowledgment indicating that the device called 16 or 18 is available, the calling client server 17 will inform the calling party to use a normal telephone call. At least there are two approaches for a client server device to recognize an Internet telephone call from the owner server 38 as mentioned above. An exemplary method uses different telephone ring patterns for a secondary line, such as a "teen line," as shown in Step 220. A secondary line such as a "teen line" has a unique telephone number but shares the same telephone line. same physical line with the main phone number. The ring patterns for the secondary line and the primary line are different. Different ringing patterns are commonly used to distinguish between incoming calls for different receivers in a location, for example, between a call for a parent and a call for a child. In this method, the owner server 38 marks the target device 18 using a "teen line" number. Then, the client server device 18 recognizes the regular telephone call from the owner server through the PSTN by detecting the special ring pattern of the "teen line", as shown in Step 221. If the ringing signal is a "teen line" ring, the client server device 18 will discontinue the call and dial the Internet service provider 38 to establish the Internet connection in step 222. Then, the telephone call Internet Protocol can be started in Step 223. If, on the other hand, the ringing signal is a regular ringing, the client server 18 will ignore it and will keep ringing the regular telephone. It should be understood that the user should not pick up the telephone when the doorbell is on the "teen line" ring, since doing so would interfere with the completion of the Internet Protocol telephone call. Another exemplary method of a client server recognizing an Internet telephone call uses Caller ID information, such as the Caller Part 1 identification information. The identification information of the calling party type 1 is transmitted during the ringing stage, off-hook from a regular telephone call. In accordance with this exemplary method, a special telephone number is assigned to the owner server 38. As shown in Step 225, when the owner server 38 dials the target device 18 to alert the called party of a voice call On incoming internet protocol, the specially assigned phone number is sent as identification information of the calling party type 1. By decoding the Caller ID information in step 226, the destination client server 18 can recognize the incoming call from the owner server 38. The operations after call recognition are shown in Figure 2 as steps 227 and 228 and are the same as those described for the first exemplary method described above. It should be understood that the user should not pick up a telephone when it rings the first time, since doing so may interfere with the reception and acknowledgment of the caller's Identification information. This limitation is a normal requirement for the use of identification information of the calling party type 1. It should be understood that the embodiments and variations shown and described herein are solely illustrations and that various modifications can be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention.

Claims (6)

1. CLAIMS 1. A method for establishing a voice call on the Internet, comprising the steps of: initiating an Internet voice call to a called device (16, 18); determine if the called device is already connected to the Internet (41); initiating a PSTN telephone call with identification information of the calling party to the called device, if the called device is not already connected to the Internet; and connecting the called device to the Internet in response to the identification information of the associated calling party. The method of claim 1, wherein the identification information of the associated calling party is a predetermined calling party identification number. 3. A method for establishing an Internet Protocol vox call through an Internet Protocol network (41), comprising the steps of: initiating an Internet Protocol voice call to a called device (16, 18); determine if the called device is connected to the Internet Protocol network; initiate a PSTN telephone call with a distinctive ring pattern to the called device, if the called device is not yet connected to the Internet Protocol network; and connecting the called device to the Internet Protocol network in response to the distinctive ringing pattern. The method of claim 3, wherein the distinctive ring pattern is different from the ring pattern of a regular PSTN telephone call. 5. A method for indicating that an Internet communication has arrived at a device connected to a PSTN line, comprising the steps of: receiving a calling party identification telephone number through the PSTN line; compare the calling party identification number of the receiving party with a predetermined telephone number; if the receiving party's telephone number matches the predetermined telephone number, then there is an Internet communication waiting to be processed. The method of claim 5, further comprising the step of processing the Internet communication in response to the arrival indication.