WO2011095717A1

WO2011095717A1 - Management of access to the status of resources connected to a communication network

Info

Publication number: WO2011095717A1
Application number: PCT/FR2011/050068
Authority: WO
Inventors: Yann Gestraud; Laurence Bertin
Original assignee: France Telecom
Priority date: 2010-01-20
Filing date: 2011-01-14
Publication date: 2011-08-11

Abstract

The invention relates to a method for managing access to the status of physical and/or software resources (MOB21, MOB22, MOB31, MOB32) that are connected to a communication network (RES). The resources are identified by a respective identifier (MSISDN21, MSISDN22, MSISDN31, MSISDN32) and are managed by a respective manager (OP1, OP2, OP3). At least one resource, referred to as a "primary" resource (MOB11), has access to a resource list (LU). The method includes the following steps: a grouping step, during which the identifiers from the list (LU) are grouped according to the manager; a step of receiving, by means of a first manager (OP1), a request to access the status of the resources from the list; and a step of sending, to at least one second manager, a respective request to access the status of the resources from the list that are managed by the manager receiving the request, a request including at least the grouping related to the manager receiving the request.

Description

Managing access to the status of resources connected to a communication network.

The invention relates to a method for managing access to the status of physical and / or software resources connected to a respective communication network managed by a respective network manager.

The resources in question encompass any data processing device or software application capable of having a status. A device is for example a fixed or portable personal computer, a radiotelephone, an electronic assistant (eg PDA), a smart card, etc. In the example which will illustrate the invention, the resource will be a data processing device. In this configuration, the status of the device may be its electrical state, or the state of presence of the user of the device generally used in the communication frame by means of interpersonal communication tools. The invention is particularly applicable to systems in which access to the status of a given device requires prior agreement for example of the. from the user of the given device or from the network manager of the given device.

In the remainder of the description, the status considered for the illustration of the invention is the state of presence of a user. The state of presence in question is for example the connected or disconnected state of the user relative to a communication network.

A communication network is managed by a manager who is most often a telecommunication operator. For this, each manager has a set of physical and software resources including a device, illustrated in the following by a presence server, able to manage the states of presence of users of devices connected to its network. The management of the presence states essentially consists of obtaining the presence state, its storage in a memory of the set of aforementioned resources, and the communication of the state of presence according to authorization rules able to grant or not access to the state of presence.

Today, users of communication tools can choose between several telecommunication operators to communicate. Also, when a user enters a contract with an operator, he becomes a subscriber of the operator. Subsequently, each telecommunication operator manages the respective presence status of all or part of its subscribers, in particular those having subscribed to the presence management service offered by the operator to which it subscribes. The presence states are stored on respective presence servers and are accessible by anyone who requests them, in particular those who have subscribed to the presence management service from their operator.

A request for authorization to access the states of presence is described for example in the standard "OMA-TS-Presence_SI PLE-V2_0-20090917-C". In this standard, each operator has various resources including a component designated by the acronym RLS (Resource List Server). The RLS component of a given operator is able to receive, from a device connected to the network of the operator, a request to access the presence state of the contacts of a contact list. After receiving a request, the RLS component then retrieves the contact list in question and transmits individual access requests to the presence states of the different contacts in the list. In other words, the RLS component sends as many requests to the presence servers concerned as there are contacts involved in the access request. To illustrate an access request according to the aforementioned standard, consider a user of a first network managed by a first operator. Consider also that this user has several contacts in his contact list and he wants to have access to the presence status of his contacts, the latter may be subscribers of the first operator or subscribers of other operators. In this configuration, the RLS component of the first operator receives the request for access to the presence state. The RLS component retrieve the contact list. Several list retrieval modes can be used. A recovery mode consists for example in extracting, from the access request received, a list identifier and retrieve the list of contacts in question from another component LS-XDMS through the identifier. This other identifier RLS-XDMS is defined in the aforementioned standard. Then, the RLS component retrieves the list of contacts and transmits as many access requests to the presence state as there are contacts concerned. The requests in question are transmitted either locally to the presence server of the operator associated with the EPIRB at the origin of the request, or through one or more IMS network architectures associated with the second and third operators.

Recall that an IMS type network includes a mechanism able to determine for a given identifier the associated operator (ENUM specified in the document RFC 3761). Remember also that a network identifier is for example a number MSISDN (acronym for "Mobile Station Integrated Services Digital Network") of a radiotelephone.

Thus, after obtaining the different numbers, a component of the IMS network transmits to the second and third operator as many requests for access to the presence state that there are contacts concerned.

In the aforementioned standard, this results in sending from the RLS component of requests "SIP SUBSCRIBE" in number at least equal to the number of contacts subscribed to the second operator and the third operator, the local access requests to the first operator can be managed at the discretion of the first operator.

Thus, in the example above, it can be seen that both the RLS component of the first operator and the component of the IMS network belonging to the first operator described above transmit as many access requests to the presence states. that there are contacts managed by the second and third operator. This results in a number of requests that the network between operators saturates. Especially since the described operation above can be performed not only by other users subscribers of the first operator, but also by other users subscribed to other operators, namely by users of the second and third operator in our example. As the number of users of interpersonal communication tools grows, it has become urgent to reduce the number of access requests.

The invention improves the situation.

^■ To this end, the invention relates to an access method for managing the status of physical resources and / or software connected to a communication network, resources being identified by a respective identifier and managed by a respective manager, at least one resource, said first resource having a list of resources, characterized in that it comprises

a grouping step during which the identifiers of the list are grouped by manager, a step of reception by a first manager of a request for access to the statuses of the resources of the list,

a step of transmitting, to at least a second manager of a respective access request to the statuses of the resources of the list managed by the manager receiving the request, a request including at least the grouping associated with the destination manager of Requirement.

Thus, the invention offers the possibility of grouping contacts of a contact list by manager. In this way, a request for obtaining status transmitted from a first manager to a second manager includes as a parameter a grouping of identifiers. This results in a considerable reduction of requests transmitted on the network between managers. Note that the reception step may precede the grouping step, or conversely

Note also that in the transmission step, the group may be a group of identifiers or a grouping identifier. If the grouping identifier is used, the receiver manager of the access request is then able to find the grouping at the base of this identifier.

The first manager can receive several requests, simultaneously or successively. According to a first variant, during the reception step, the first manager stores in memory requests from a plurality of users and received during a given period of time. Then, during the transmission step, an access request includes groupings associated with said plurality of users with respect to the destination manager of the request. Thus, a request includes several groupings associated with a plurality of users. This variant makes it possible to reduce the number of requests to be transmitted from a first manager to one or more managers.

On the other hand, according to a second variant, the grouping step is followed by a step of determining the size of the groupings and a step of dimensioning the bandwidth of the network separating the first manager and a second manager. function of the size of the grouping associated with the second manager. Thus, this second variant takes into account the size of the groupings to determine the bandwidth to use. Thus, when a first list includes a lot of contacts compared to a second list, a larger bandwidth will be allocated to communications with the contacts of this first list. This variant optimizes the use of the communication network.

According to a hardware aspect, the invention relates to a computer system comprising physical and / or software resources connected to a communication network, the resources having a respective status and are identified by a respective identifier and managed by a respective manager, at least one resource, said first resource having a list of resources, characterized in that it comprises

grouping means capable of grouping the identifiers of the list by manager, a manager, said first manager, comprising

means for receiving a request for access to the status of the resources of the list,

means for transmitting, to at least a second manager of an access request respectively to the statuses of the resources of the list managed by the manager receiving the request, a request including the grouping associated with the manager receiving the request; .

According to another material aspect, the invention relates to a computing resource able to be connected to a network of a first network manager and able to receive an access request from a first resource to resources of a list of resources. resources, the list resources having a status and being associated with a respective identifier and managed by a respective manager, characterized in that it comprises

means for receiving a request for access to the status of the resources of the list; means for obtaining groupings of the identifiers of the list by manager;

means for transmitting, to at least a second manager of an access request respectively to the statuses of the resources of the list managed by the manager receiving the request, a request including the grouping associated with the manager receiving the request; . We will see in the following description that the means of obtaining are means able to require groupings and to receive these groupings.

The invention also relates to the computer program adapted to be implemented via a set of resources, the program comprising code instructions which, when the program is executed by a processor performs the steps of the method defined above namely,

a grouping step during which the identifiers of the list are grouped by manager, a step of reception by a first manager of a request for access to the status of the resources of the list,

a step of transmitting, to at least a second manager of a respective access request to the statuses of the resources of the list managed by the manager receiving the request, a request including the grouping associated with the manager receiving the request; .

In the example which will illustrate the invention, ["resource set includes the RLS component, the RLS-XDMS component.

The invention will be better understood on reading the description which follows, given by way of example and with reference to the accompanying drawings. The figures:

FIG. 1 represents a computer system on which is illustrated an exemplary embodiment of the method of the invention.

Figure 2 is a detailed view of the various resources of an operator involved in the realization of the exemplary embodiment. Figures 3 and 5 are flow diagrams illustrating the steps of two embodiments described with reference to Figures 4 and 5 introduced below. Figures 4 and 6 show examples of contact lists illustrating two embodiments, respectively.

Detailed description of exemplary embodiments illustrating the invention

FIG. 1 represents a SYS system comprising resources, illustrated by devices, able to communicate with each other through an ES communication network. The devices are in our example mobile phones MOBnl, MOBn2. In our example, the network RES is broken down into three sub-networks, also called domains by the skilled person, managed by respective managers. In our example, the three network operators are OPn telecommunication operators. In our exemplary embodiment, n is an integer and can take the values 1 to 3.

In our example, we consider a first user UT11 of a first phone MOB11 with a list of contacts LU. The contacts in question are UT21 users UT22 UT31 UT32 with whom the first user is likely to come into contact with the first MOBil phone through the RES network. This list of contacts is for example a list stored by the first operator and downloadable on the phone MOB11. This list stores information relating to each contact including the telephone number and possibly the presence status of the contact to which the first user can subscribe.

In our example, the LU list in question comprises four UT21 contacts UT22 UT31 UT32 including two UT21 subscribers UT22 of the second operator QP2 and two subscribers UT31 UT32 of the third operator OP3. UT21 UT22 UT31 UT32 users use MOB21 MOB22 MOB32 MOB33 phones respectively.

Each phone, or group of phone, corresponds to an identifier. In our example, each phone has a separate MSISDN number. In this configuration, the telephone MOB11 corresponds to the identifier MSISDN11; on the phone MOB21 is the identifier MSISDN21; on the telephone OB22 corresponds the identifier MSISDN22; on the telephone MOB31 corresponds the identifier MSISDN31; on the phone MOB32 is the MSISDN32 identifier.

Referring now to FIG. 2. FIG. 2 is a detailed view of physical and software resources constituting the network of an operator participating in the implementation of the exemplary embodiment. We will refer to the OMA standard and more particularly to the "SIMPLE Architecture Presence" Candidate Version 2.0 - Sep 17, 2009 standard "for more information about the components and the interplay between these components.In our example, each network is composed of a set of resources to know:

An RLSn component, namely a first component RLS1, a second component RLS2, a third component RLS3;

an RLSn-XDMS component, namely a first component RLS1-XDMS, a second component RLS2-XDMS, a third component RLS3-

XDMS;

a presence management component PSn, namely a first component PSI, a second component PS2, a third component PS3; an AGPn component, namely a first AGP1 component, a second AGP2 component, a third AGP3 component; with in our example l≤n≤3, the value n = 1 being associated with the first operator, n = 2 being associated with the second operator, n = 3 being associated with the third operator. A component is for example a server. Also each component, or part of the components, can be stored on the same device such as a server. In our example, the components are able to communicate with each other via the IMS network.

Also, some components communicate with each other directly without using the IMS network. In particular, the component LSn is able to communicate directly with the component RLSn-XDMS; the AGPn component is also able to communicate directly with the RLSn-XDMS component and with an XDMC application present on the telephones of the same operator OPn.

In our example, the PSn component is a presence server. Recall here that a presence server of an operator manages the state of presence of devices of which it is the manager. In our example, presence state management includes receiving presence states, storing the presence state, and providing the information according to authorization rules.

Each contact has a presence state, for example "busy" to indicate that the contact is not willing to receive a message; or "present" to indicate that the contact is connected and is willing to receive messages.

In the present embodiment, a request for access to the presence state, for example in the form of a subscription request to a service providing the presence state, is preceded by a grouping of identifiers MSISDN per operator. After receiving the request, the first operator OP1 transmits to at least one second operator, in our example to the second operator OP2 and the third operator OP3, a respective access request including the group associated with the destination manager of the request.

These groupings are illustrated in Figure 4. In this figure, the list LU is broken down into 3 groupings

Lll-1 including the contacts managed by the first operator OP1;

Lll-2 including the contacts managed by the second operator OP2; Lll-3 including the contacts managed by the third operator OP3.

In our example, the first UT11 user having no subscriber contact to the first operator, the list L11-1 is therefore empty. Conversely, the other two lists each include two contacts. In our example, the lists include at least the identifiers of the contacts. In our example, Lll-2 includes the identifiers MSISDN21 and MSISDN22; and list Lll-3 includes identifiers MSISDN31 and SISDN32.

An exemplary embodiment will be described with reference to FIGS.

3. In our example, the method comprises two phases.

- A first phase PHI storage of a list of contacts in the component RLS1-XDMS.

A second phase PH2 of access request to the presence state of the contacts of the list stored during the first phase. During the first PHI phase, the user UT11 subscriber of the first operator OP1 creates an LU list. Next, it executes an XDMC application on the MOB11 telephone so as to communicate the LU list to the AGP1 component via a network, for example an Internet network. After reception, the AGP1 component then transmits the list to the RLS1-XDMS component for storage. An identifier ID11 makes it possible to identify this list LU.

The list LU thus constituted, the identifiers are grouped by operator in the manner illustrated in FIG. 4. The first component RLS1 comprises for this purpose means able to determine the associated operator for a given identifier. A mechanism such as ENUM, known to those skilled in the art, specified in RFC 3671, or other similar mechanisms, may be used for this purpose. In our example, each grouping of a list is a sub-list. Thus in our example, the numbers MSISDN21 and MSISDN22 are grouped in the sub-list Lll-2 associated with the second operator OP2; similarly, the numbers MSISDN31 and MSISDN32 are grouped in the sub-list Lll-3 associated with the third operator OP3.

During this first phase PHI, two variants can be envisaged.

A first variant in which each sub-list corresponds to a respective identifier. Then, the sub-lists and the respective identifier are transmitted to the different RLS2-XDMS and RLS3-XDMS components of the second and third operators, respectively, for storage. In this way, during a subsequent access request from the first manager OP1, the first component RLS1 transmits a list identifier to subscribe to the presence state. In this configuration, the second or third component RLS2 and RLS3 receive the list identifiers. After receiving the identifiers, the RLS2 and RLS3 components query the RLS2-XDMS or RLS2-XDMS components, respectively, based on the received identifiers, respectively, and receive back the respective lists corresponding to the identifiers.

A second variant consists in including in an access request the contents of a sub-list. The second phase PH2 will be illustrated at the base of this second variant.

During the second phase PH2, the user UT11 wishes to subscribe to the presence states of the contacts of the list LU.

In our example, the subscription is done as follows. The parentheses used below show the references used in the boxes of the algorithm shown in Figure 3.

In a first step ET1, the user executes EXE a WTC application present on the phone MOB11 (EXE WTC). In a second step ET2, the WTC application transmits a subscription request (SBSC) to the IMS network. The subscription request includes in our example the identifier ID of the list concerned LU.

In a third step ET3, the IMS network transmits TRS1 to the request to the RLS1 component of the first operator OP1 (TRS1-> RLS1).

In a fourth step ET4, the RLS1 component requires the list from the RLS1-XDMS component (RLS1-> RLS1-XDMS).

In the fifth step ΕΞΤ5, the component RLS1-XDMS extracts the identifier ID from the list included in the request (RLS1-XDMS: EXT ID) and in return sends, during a sixth step ET6, the list LU corresponding to the RLSl component. In our example, the list provided indicates the groupings L11.l L12.2 L13.3 constituted during the first phase PHI (Lll.l L12.2 L13.3 -> RLS1)

The RLS1 component receives the groupings and transmits, in a seventh step Ε Γ7, as many requests as for grouping to the presence servers concerned (REQ _W1 (Lll-n) -> PS1, REQ _OAl (Lll-n) -

<RLSn, with n = 1, 2, 3 in our example). In our example, the first user UT11 has two subscriber contacts of the second operator and two subscriber contacts of the third operator. In this configuration, the first component RLS1 transmits to the second component RLS2 and third component RLS3 an access request REQ _0P2 (Lll-2) and REQ _OP3 (Lll-3) respectively to the states of presence of the contacts of the users UT21 and UT22 for the second operator OP2 and users UT31 and UT32 for the third operator OP3. It is understood here that two requests are transmitted, a first request REQ _0PZ (Lll-2) from the first RLS1 to the second RLS2 and a second request REQ _0P3 (Lll-3) from the first RLS1 to the third

RLS3; each request including the list concerned. Each RL2 component or RLS3 of the second and third operators receive the respective REQ _0P2 (Lll-2) and REQ _ora (Lll-3) access requests.

In our exemplary embodiment, the first user UT11 has no contact managed by the first operator. If it had had one or more contacts managed by the first operator, a subscription request REQ _0P1 (Lll-1) would have been transmitted from the first component RLS1 to the first presence server PSI (REQ _0P1 (Lll-n) - > PSl) either via the IMS network or directly from the first RLS1 component to the first server when they are stored on the same server, or through another means of communication that the IMS network.

According to a first variant, several users can request access to different contact lists. The flowchart of FIG. 5 is an example of steps illustrating this embodiment. FIG. 6 illustrates the contact lists of two users UT11 and UT12 of the first operator OP1.

The first user has the same contact list as previously defined. With reference to FIG. 6, the second UT12 user has an L12 list including the following groupings

- L12-1 including the contacts managed by the first operator OP1; - L12-2 including the contacts managed by the second operator OP2;

- L12-3 including the contacts managed by the third operator OP3.

Let us consider in the following that none of the preceding groupings relative to the second user UT21 is empty. Consider that this second UT21 user is equipped with a MOB12 phone. In this configuration, the first RLSl component can receive multiple requests from the same UTll user or multiple users different subscribers to the first operator OP1, for example the first user UT11 and the second user UT12.

According to this first variant, the first component RLS1 can store all the requests received over a given period of time, use the groupings according to the first phase for each user and transmit a single request for access to a respective operator, the request including several given groupings associated with several lists,

Consider the two cases in isolation. The first case concerns two successive requests from the same user, for example UT11, from two distinct devices, for example the telephone OB11 and another device such as a computer (not shown in the figures). In this configuration, the access request being identical in each case, the first component RLS1 sends only one request instead of two. This avoids redundant requests for access on the network.

The second case concerns two users issuing two distinct access requests in the given period of time from two devices, namely in our example from the MOB11 and MOB12 telephones (see Figure 1). In this configuration, the first RLS1 component sends three requests, each request including the groupings constituted for each user relative to the recipient operator of the request. Thus, a first request including as a parameter the sublists (L11-1, L12-1) is transmitted locally in the network of the first operator to the first presence server PSI; a second request comprising as parameters the sublists (L11-2, L12-2) for the second operator; a third request comprising as parameters the sublists (L11-3, L12-3) for the third operator OP3. In FIG. 6, the requests are written in the following way: REQ _0P1 (Lll-1, L12-1) or REQ _0il (L12-1) because Lll-1 is empty, REQ _op2 (Lll-2, L12-2 ), REQ ₀ "(Lll-3, L12-3).

These requests are transmitted respectively, to the first presence server PSI, to the second component RLS2 and to the third RLS3 component (REQ _0P1 (L11-1, L12-1) -> PS1, _REQ0P1 (L11-2, L12->2-> RLS2, _REQ0P3 (L11-3, L12-3) -RLS3).

Note that the form of the requests does not represent the reality; indeed, any other writing can be considered; other settings, other than contact sublists, can also be added.

According to another variant, the method comprises a step of determining the size of the groupings followed by a step of dimensioning the bandwidth of the network separating the first manager and a second function manager from the result of the determination step. Using the example described above, two contacts per operator are counted. In this configuration, the bandwidth can then be shared equitably.

Another example could have been based on a number of different contacts depending on the operator. For example, the first user could have had "k" contacts managed by the second operator OP2 and "I" contacts managed by the third, where k and I are integers and k is greater than I (k> l). In this configuration, the bandwidth allocated for communications between the MOBll phone and the telephones of the second operator OP2 is greater than the bandwidth allocated for communications between the MOBll phone and the telephones of the third operator OP3.

In the examples which precede the first phase PHI precedes the second phase PH2. Now the first phase PHI can take place during the second phase PH2. For example, the first phase can take place when, in our example, the first component receives the access request at the third step ET3, or when the first component RLS1-XDMS receives the request at the fourth step.

Claims

claims

A method for managing access to the status of physical and / or software resources (MOB21, MOB22, MOB31, MOB32) connected to a communication network (RES), the resources being identified by a respective identifier (MSISDN21, MSISDN22, MSISDN31, MSISDN32) and managed by a respective manager (OP1, OP2, OP3), at least one resource, said first resource (MOB11) having a list (LU) of resources, characterized in that it comprises

a grouping step during which the identifiers of the list (LU) are grouped by manager,

a step of receiving by a first manager (OP1) a request for access to the statuses of the resources of the list,

2. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that, during the reception step, the first manager keeps requests from a plurality of users and received during a given period of time, in that during the transmission step, an access request includes groupings associated with said plurality of users with respect to the destination manager of the request.

3. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that the grouping step is followed by a step of determining the size of the groupings and a step of sizing the bandwidth of the network separating the first manager and a second manager based on the size of the pool associated with the second manager.

Computer system comprising physical and / or software resources (MOB21, MOB22, MOB31, MOB32) connected to a communication network (RES), the resources having a respective status and are identified by a respective identifier (MSISDN21, MSISDN22, MSISDN31 , MSISDN32) and managed by a respective manager (OP1, OP2, OP3), at least one resource, said first resource (MOB11) having a list (LU) of resources, characterized in that it comprises

- Means of grouping able to group the identifiers of the list by manager, a manager (OP1), said first manager, comprising

means for receiving a request for access to the status of the resources of the list (LU),

5. IT resource (RLS1) capable of being connected to a network of a first network manager and able to receive an access request from a first resource (MOB1) to _. resources (MOB21, MOB22, MOB31, MOB32) of a list of resources, the resources of the list having a status and being associated with a respective identifier and managed by a respective manager (OP1, OP2, OP3), characterized in that that she understands

means for obtaining groupings of the identifiers of the list by manager, means for transmitting, to at least a second manager of an access request respectively to the statuses of the resources of the list managed by the manager receiving the request, a request including the grouping associated with the manager receiving the request; .

A computer program adapted to be implemented through a set of computing resources, the program comprising code instructions which, when the program is executed by a processor performs the method steps defined in claim 1.