US00839 1273B2 (12) United States Patent (10) Patent No.: US 8,391,273 B2 Ku (45) Date of Patent: Mar. 5, 2013 (54) METHODS.SYSTEMSAND.COMPETEB.PROGRAMI PRODUCTS FOR PROVIDING 2007/0061397E.R. A1 3/200739 GregoratStyleacket al.et al.................... alm 573. INTRA-CARRIER P-BASED CONNECTIONS 2007/0133574 A1 6/2007 Tejani et al. USINGA COMMON TELEPHONE NUMBER 2007/0165613 A1* 7/2007 Soo et al. ...................... 370,356 MAPPING ARCHITECTURE 2007/0286379 A1* 12/2007 Wiatrowski et al. ..... 379,201.01 2008.0002665 A1 1/2008 Soo et al. .... 370,352 2008/00 19356 A1 1/2008 Marsico ........................ 370,352 (75) Inventor: Bernard Ku, Austin, TX (US) 2008.0025492 A1* 1/2008 Heinze et al. ............ 379,220.01 2008. O198997 A1* 8, 2008 Sterman et al. .......... 379,220.01 (73) Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I, L.P., 2009/0227276 A1* 9/2009 Agarwal et al. ............... 455,466 Reno, NV (US) 2010/0158201 A1* 6/2010 Vijay Marathe et al. ....... 379,36 2011/0038468 A1 2/2011 Hannan et al. ........... 379,112.01 (*) Notice: Subject to any disclaimer, the term of this 2011/0149956 A1*ck 6, 2011 Alt et al. ....................... 370,352 patent is extended or adjusted under 35 FOREIGN PATENT DOCUMENTS U.S.C. 154(b) by 1111 days. JP 2007243564 A * 9, 2007 (21) Appl. No.: 12/338,259 OTHER PUBLICATIONS Lind, “ENUMOverview”, CC1 ENUM LLCPETPAC, 6 pages, Jun. (22) Filed: Dec. 18, 2008 13, 2006. (65) Prior Publication Data (Continued) US 2010/O157977 A1 Jun. 24, 2010 Primary Examiner — Chi Pham (51) Int. Cl Assistant Examiner — Ahmed Elallam H04L 2/28 (2006.01) SEg: Agent, or Firm — Myers Bigel Sibley & H04L 2/64 (2006.01) s H04L 2/66 (2006.01) (57) ABSTRACT 52) U.S. C. ........ 370/351: 370/252: 370/352: 370/401 - (52) s s s 3791900 Internet protocol (IP) based calls from a first terminal in an IP (58) Field of Classification Search .................. 370/352, politiesEllistina 370/353,354,356, 252,351,389, 401; 379/220.01, ystem. p hati p 379,221.O2,900 request at a common communications COre that 1S COmmon to - v- both the IP based communications system and the other com See application file for complete search history. munications system, a query is transmitted to a private tele (56) References Cited phone number mapping database that contains routing infor mation for terminals in both the IP based communications U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS system and the other communications system requesting 7,624,417 B2 11/2009 Dua routing information for the second terminal. Routing infor 7,787,445 B2 8, 2010 Marsico mation for the call setup request is received from the private 7,944.912 B2 5/2011 Kobayashi et al. telephone number mapping database for routing the call. 7.948,967 B2 * 5/2011 Ku ................................ 370,351 7.974,295 B2 * 7/2011 Tuohino et al. ............... 370/401 18 Claims, 11 Drawing Sheets ed RIVATE MS-BASED US 8,391.273 B2 Page 2 OTHER PUBLICATIONS Stastny et al., “ENUM The bridge between telephony and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, “Telephone Number Mapping”. Internet’. Eures.com message, http://www.eures.com.de/message? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone Number Mapping, 7 messageSep2004/ENUM The bridge between telephony pages, Last Downloaded: Oct. 17, 2008. Faltstrom, “E. 164 number and DNS, Network Working Group, and Internet, 4 pages, Last Downloaded: Oct. 20, 2008. Cisco Systems, Inc. (Sep. 2000), 10 pages, http://www.ietforg/rfc/ Höneisen et al., “SWITCH (The Swiss Education & Research Net rfc2916.txt, Last Downloaded: Oct. 20, 2008. work) Hitchhikers Guide to ENUM Services ENUM Beyond Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, “Voice peering'. http://en. SIP, Version 1.0, 13 pages (2005). wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice peering, 1 page, Last Downloaded: Oct. 20, 2008. * cited by examiner U.S. Patent Mar. 5, 2013 Sheet 1 of 11 US 8,391,273 B2 TIERO (COUNTRY CODE e164.arpa REGISTRY) TER 1 nSanp, enum.Com (TELEPHONE NUMBER (4.1.2.1.e164.arpa) SWeden enum.COm REGISTRY) TIER 2 (APPLICATION e164.att.net e164.xyz.com INFORMATION) FIGURE 1 U.S. Patent Mar. 5, 2013 Sheet 2 of 11 US 8,391,273 B2 THIRD PARTY TER 2. ENUM SERVICE PROVIDER 50 BVoIP OTHER MOBILITY OSS/BSS CARRIERS 22 60 PRIVATE ENUM 24 MOBILITY OSS/BSS 42 PRIVATE ENUM 44 CVoIP OSS/BSS 32 PRIVATE ENUM 34 FIGURE 2 U.S. Patent Mar. 5, 2013 Sheet 3 of 11 US 8,391,273 B2 OSS/BSS 224 t < D. CARRIERB CARRIERA TER 2* TER 2 ENUM 220 OTHER NETWORKS is real ro MOBILITY HOME OSS/BSS NETWORK 114 100 TER Of ENUM PRIVATE (LOCAL COPY) ENUM 112 110 QUERY - - - - DATA TRANSFER FIGURE 3 U.S. Patent Mar. 5, 2013 Sheet 4 of 11 US 8,391,273 B2 CARRIER B CARRIER B NETWORK TIER2 200 ENUM 220 NETWORK ENTRY POINT 228 TER O/1 ENUM 210 CARRIERA PRIVATE TIER 2* ENUM ENUM 110 130 CARRIERA HOME NETWORK 100 FIGURE 4 U.S. Patent Mar. 5, 2013 Sheet 5 of 11 US 8,391,273 B2 CARRIERB NETWORK 200 TER O/1 ENUM 210 CARRIERA PRIVATE TIER 2* ENUM ENUM 130 CARRIERA HOME NETWORK FIGURE 5 U.S. Patent Mar. 5, 2013 Sheet 6 of 11 US 8,391,273 B2 TER Of1 ENUM 140 PRIVATE ENUM MS-BASED NETWORK U.S. Patent Mar. 5, 2013 Sheet 7 of 11 US 8,391,273 B2 TER O/1 ENUM MS-BASED NETWORK FIGURE 7 U.S. Patent Mar. 5, 2013 Sheet 8 of 11 US 8,391,273 B2 TER O/1 TIER2 PRVATE ENUM ENUM ENUM 140 130 110 MS-BASED NETWORK 100 FIGURE 8 U.S. Patent Mar. 5, 2013 Sheet 9 of 11 US 8,391,273 B2 RECEIVE CALL SETUP REQUEST 602 FORWARD CALL SETUP REQUEST TO CORE 604 TRANSMIT OUERY TO PRIVATE ENUM 606 RECEIVENAPTR FROMPRIVATE ENUM 608 ROUTE CALL ACCORDING TO ROUTING INFORMATION IN NAPTR 610 FIGURE 9 U.S. Patent Mar. 5, 2013 Sheet 10 of 11 US 8,391,273 B2 RECEIVE RESPONSE FROM PRIVATE ENUM 702 RESPONSE INCLUDES NAPTRT 704 ROUTE CALL PER NAPTR NAPTR PONTS TO PSTN2 708 706 NAPTR INCLUDES LNP DATA2 710 OBTAN LNP DATA 712 FORWARD CALL TO PSTN 714 FIGURE 10 U.S. Patent Mar. 5, 2013 Sheet 11 of 11 US 8,391,273 B2 86 RAM ROM EPROM 80 82 84 FIG. 11 US 8,391,273 B2 1. 2 METHODS, SYSTEMS, AND COMPUTER packetized and communicated over the Internet. A telephone PROGRAMI PRODUCTS FOR PROVIDING call may thereby be communicated through the Internet to a INTRA-CARRIER P-BASED CONNECTIONS VoIP provider, which converts the call back to an analog USINGA COMMON TELEPHONE NUMBER signal and places the call through a PSTN that is local to the MAPPING ARCHITECTURE called terminal. Alternatively, the VoIP provider can process the call entirely in digital form if the called terminal/tele RELATED APPLICATIONS phone is also a VoIP phone. A user can thereby dial a tele phone number in a conventional manner and have the call The present application is related to co-pending and com routed partly or entirely through the Internet, instead of monly assigned U.S. application Ser. No. 12/336,972, 10 through the PSTN. Similarly, an analog telephone can place a entitled “METHODS, SYSTEMS, AND COMPUTER PRO call to a VoIP telephone. The telephone call is routed through GRAM PRODUCTS FOR ENABLING NON-IMS QUE the PSTN to the VoIP provider, which converts the call into a RIES OF A COMMON TELEPHONE NUMBER MAP digital signal, packetizes the digital information and trans PING SYSTEM filed on Dec. 17, 2008, and to co-pending mits the packets to the called VoIP telephone. and commonly assigned U.S. application Ser. No. 12/338, 15 Furthermore, some telephone carriers have converted their 273, entitled “METHODS, SYSTEMS, AND COMPUTER backbone networks to carry Voice traffic, including even PROGRAMPRODUCTS FOR PROVIDING INTER-CAR Voice traffic that originates and terminates at analog tele RIER IP-BASED CONNECTIONS USING A COMMON phones, using VoIP. VoIP is therefore expected to play a TELEPHONE NUMBER MAPPING ARCHITECTURE significant role in voice telephony in the future. However, the filed on Dec. 18, 2008, the disclosures of which are incorpo convergence of traditional analog telephony and VoIP tele rated herein by reference. phony has been hampered by the fact that IP addressing is substantially different from E.164 addressing. As noted BACKGROUND above, E. 164 addressing uses the ten-digit NPA-NXX XXXX addressing format. In contrast, IP communications The present disclosure relates to communications net 25 utilize a 32-bit IP address, which is divided into four 8-bit works, and, more particularly, to routing IP-based connec numbers having a hierarchical relationship that designates a tions between different networks in an intra-carrier environ sub-network and a terminal within the sub-network. ment. Since the E. 164 numbering system and the IP address Historically, voice telephone calls have been carried over system are separate, a VoIP telephone may be associated with circuit-switched telephone networks, such as the Public 30 both an IP address and an E. 164 telephone number. Further Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). The PSTN was origi more, a party calling a VoIP telephone using an E. 164 tele nally designed to carry voice traffic over switched analog phone number may not be aware of the IP address of the VoIP lines. However, the backbone transmission network of the telephone. PSTN is now entirely digital, although analog circuits are still used to connect some analog telephones to the PSTN.