WO2001022699A1

WO2001022699A1 - Distributed processing systems incorporating a plurality of cells which process information in response to single events

Info

Publication number: WO2001022699A1
Application number: PCT/US2000/026137
Authority: WO
Inventors: Jeffrey I. Robinson
Original assignee: Iq Systems, Inc.
Priority date: 1999-09-24
Filing date: 2000-09-22
Publication date: 2001-03-29
Also published as: WO2001022699A9; AU7608300A

Abstract

A distributed processing system includes a plurality of cells where each cell processes information in response to a type of event, and cells communicate with each other according to an (asynchronous) event-reaction protocol. Cells maintain mailing lists which are associated with events and which indicate the address(es) of cell(s) to whom a message is sent in response to the event. According to one embodiment, at least one cell is provided with the ability to read, write, and delete any address on any mailing list in the system. According to another embodiment, at least one cell keeps a list of events (subscription list) that are deemed important by the user where it is the cell's responsibility to insure that it remains subscribed to the mailing lists associated with these events. According to another embodiment, at least one cell serves more than one mailing list and preferably keeps a list of the mailing lists it serves. This cell also has the ability to move subscribers from one mailing list to another, to modify which mailing list is the currently active mailing list or to make a plurality of mailing lists simultaneously active.

Description

DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING SYSTEMS INCORPORATING A PLURALITY OF CELLS WHICH PROCESS INFORMATION IN RESPONSE TO SINGLE EVENTS

This application is a continuation-in-part of Serial Number 09/226,867, filed January 7, 1999, and entitled "Distributed Processing Systems Incorporating A Plurality Of Cells Which Process Information In Response To Single Events", the complete disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein. This application also claims the benefit of provisional application Serial Number 60/155,712, filed September 24, 1999.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The invention relates to distributed processing systems. More particularly, the invention relates to distributed processing systems which incorporate a plurality of processing zones (referred to herein as "cells"), each cell processing information in response to a type of event, and each cell communicating with other cells according to an event-reaction protocol as well as according to other protocols such as streaming, broadcast, etc.. Cells exhibit a symmetrical and reciprocal relationship, with cells sometimes being a controller of other cells and sometimes being controlled by other cells. The system is self-configuring, self-repairing, and operates in real time.

2. State of the Art

The above referenced parent application disclosed a distributed processing system having a plurality of cells where each cell processes information in response to a type of event, and cells communicate with each other according to a variety of protocols including an (asynchronous) event-reaction protocol. Processing is truly distributed in that no cell is considered the system host or system controller. The cells exhibit a symmetrical and reciprocal relationship with cells sometimes being a controller of other cells and sometimes being controlled by other cells. According to one embodiment, each cell is responsive to a single event and includes one or more scripts which are executed upon the occurrence of the event. At least some scripts include directions to send information to one or more scripts in another cell.

According to another embodiment, information exchanged between cells is categorized into the following types which are listed in descending order of priority: streams, data events, data event acks, spawn process, spawn process begun, spawn process ended, exception, and broadcast.

The cells may communicate with each other via a shared memory or via a communications bus. A scalable bandwidth bus is an ideal communications path. However, the communications protocol utilized by the cells enables the use of virtually any networking medium. Thus, cells may reside in the same chip or may be separated from each other by thousands of miles. A collection of interacting cells is referred to as a colony, regardless of where the cells are located, and a collection of cells which are closely located, e.g. on the same board, are referred to as a node. The modularity and scalability of the processing systems is therefore based on collections of cells and collections of colonies. Each cell may be embodied in hardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software. No cell or colony need be considered a "host" .

Each cell is provided with a collection of synchronous (non-colliding) scripts which respond to a single type of event. All scripts have addresses and the addresses of all of the scripts in the processing system are kept in a database by a resource manager script in each cell. Applications are created by linking available scripts via their respective addresses. As all scripts are driven by particular events, the code written for the distributed processing system does not require any explicit scheduling. The processing system is essentially self- scheduling and real time applications can run concurrently without interfering with each other.

communicate with each other via the same physical medium through which the telephones are coupled to subscriber lines. Each line card and phone card is considered a node, each having a number of cells. Cells in the phone cards include, for example, cells responding to the following events: phone off hook, DTMF tone dialed, ring detected, etc. Examples of scripts executed in response to events include, generate dial tone, send ringing signal, seize subscriber line, etc. Each of the cards advertises its presence to the other cards on a regular basis. The knowledge of the presence of cards (nodes) in the system is used to build mailing lists when, for example, a conference call is made, or when the system is programmed so that only some phones in the system ring when an outside call is detected by a line card.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Subsequent development of the exemplary PBX system has led to the invention of several new features which can be used to provide the PBX with additional functionality and which can be used in any of the distributed processing systems according to the invention.

One of the important new features of the invention is that at least one cell is provided with the ability to read, write, and delete any address on any mailing list in the system.

Another new feature of the invention is that at least one cell keeps a list of events that are deemed important by the user where it is the cell's responsibility to insure that it remains subscribed to the mailing lists associated with these events. For easy reference, this list is referred to as "the subscription list" .

Yet another new feature of the invention is that at least one cell serves more than one mailing list and preferably keeps a list of the mailing lists it serves. This cell also has the ability to move subscribers from one mailing list to another, to modify which mailing list is the currently active mailing list or to make a plurality of mailing lists simultaneously active.

Still another important new feature of the invention is that at least one cell has the ability to modify the subscription list of another cell.

As described in more detail below with reference to the figures and the source code, these additional new features can be understood with regard to how they improve the functionality of the exemplary PBX system. For example, each phone card in the system will keep a subscription list (programmed by a human during system setup) of the line card mailing lists to which it is subscribed. This improves the self-healing and self- configuring aspects of the invention. In the PBX example of the prior application, each phone card attempted to subscribe to each line card and repeatedly attempted to join the mailing list of each line card. Most often, the line cards ignored the attempt to join as being redundant. In the case of a system failure, however, the repeated attempts to join line card mailing lists served a self-healing function. According to the new features of the invention, each phone card keeps a list of all of the line cards to which it has incoming access (the line card mailing lists to which it is subscribed) and a list of the line cards to which it has outgoing access . During periodic self-healing, the phone cards read the line card mailing lists to assure that they are still subscribed to the correct line cards. If they find that a line card mailing list which is indicated on their subscription list dose not list them as a subscriber, they re-subscribe to that list. When a phone goes off hook to make a call, the phone card runs down the list of line cards to which it has outgoing access until it finds a line card which is not in use. If all line cards are in use, the phone card will notify the user.

The feature of being able to read, write and delete any mailing list in the system coupled with the feature of being able to modify any subscription list in the system enable powerful self-configuring in which entirely new functionality can be automatically added to the system. For example, in the exemplary PBX system, a new call assistant card can be created which automatically intervenes between one or more line cards and one or more phone cards . The call assistant card can be configured to answer incoming calls and redirect them to particular phone cards in response to DTMF tones entered by the caller and can act as a phone directory and voicemail system. The call assistant card has the ability to read, write and delete the mailing lists on the line cards and also has the ability to read, write and delete the subscription lists of the phone cards. Thus, the call assistant card will, if directed to do so at the time it is added to the system, take a copy of the mailing lists of one or more line cards and substitute itself as the only subscriber to those line cards. It will also delete the appropriate line card addresses from one or more of the phone card incoming line subscription lists and substitute its address for the line card address. By doing this, the phone cards are automatically subscribed to the new call assistant and are automatically programmed to self-heal by re-subscribing to the call assistant rather than to the line cards. The line cards are automatically reprogrammed to direct calls to the call assistant and the call assistant will automatically re-subscribe to the line cards when needed to self-heal.

The new feature of maintaining multiple mailing lists coupled with the feature of maintaining a list of the mailing lists enables new enhanced interworking among cells which was previously not readily enabled. For example, if a phone card is provided with two mailing lists for speech streams, call waiting is readily enabled. The first call or group of calls is placed on the first mailing list. A call waiting call or group of calls is placed on the second mailing list. Flashing the switch hook toggles from the first mailing list to the second mailing list. This effects a move from the first call or group of calls to the second call or group of calls. An option can be provided to make both mailing lists active at the same time and thereby merge the two groups. Multiple mailing lists in a phone card can enable many "voice channels" so that a number of calls or call groups can be handled simultaneously.

Additional objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reference to the detailed description taken in conjunction with the provided figures .

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Figure 1 is a simplified flow chart of the installation and configuration of a phone card embodying many of the new features of the invention;

Figure 2 is a simplified flow chart of the installation and configuration of a call assistant embodying many of the new features of the invention;

Figure 3 is a simplified flow chart of the operation of a phone card embodying many of the new features of the invention; and

Figure 4 is a simplified schematic diagram illustrating a distributed processing system according to the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

As mentioned above, one of the new features of the distributed processing systems of the invention is that a cell keep a list of the events or mailing lists to which it is subscribed (a "subscription list") and uses this list periodically to effect "self-healing". This feature is illustrated with reference to the phone cards of the PBX system example .

Turning now to Figure 1, according to the presently preferred embodiment of the PBX system example, when a phone card is added to the system, it must be configured by the user.

list in the system enable powerful self-configuring in which entirely new functionality can be automatically added to the system. As mentioned above, in the exemplary PBX system, a new call assistant card can be created which automatically intervenes between one or more line cards and one or more phone cards. Figure 2 illustrates how a call assistant card is configured and operates in a basic mode.

Turning now to Figure 2, when the call assistant is installed at 40, it waits at 42 and 44 for a configuration button to be pressed or for an incoming call to be detected. If the configuration button is pressed, the call assistant sends a ring message to the first phone card in the system at 46. The phone attached to the first phone card will be used to configure the call assistant card.

When the user picks up the ringing phone, the call assistant asks the user at 48 to select which incoming lines are to be administered by the call assistant. After the user responds using the DTMF keypad, the call assistant reads the ring mailing list(s) of the selected card(s) at 50. At 52, the call assistant copies the mailing list subscribers to a directory of extensions at 52. The call assistant then, at 54, deletes subscription list entries from the phone cards in the directory of extensions so that those phone cards no longer subscribe the line cards which are now administered by the call assistant. At some point, e.g. at 56 in Figure 2, the call assistant prompts the user to speak a welcome announcement which is recorded by the call assistant for later use.

The basic mode of operation of the call assistant is seen at 44, 58, and 60 in Figure 2. If an incoming call is detected at 44, the call assistant fetches voice and DTMF data from the phone cards (see 26 at Figure 1) listed in the directory of extensions and plays a message to the caller at 58. The message includes the announcement recorded at 56 and a recital of the directory of available extensions. The recital of the directory includes for example "for [play voice data] press [recite digits associated with DTMF data] " repeated for every phone card for which voice and DTMF data was fetched.

From the foregoing, it will be appreciated that the call assistant is dynamically self-configurable when users change extensions or extensions change user names. Also when new extensions are added, the call assistant can take their subscription to a line card administered by the call assistant as explained above in connection with self-healing. The call assistant will periodically check the mailing list(s) of the line(s) it is administering and perform steps 50, 52, and 54 if a new phone card is detected on a mailing list.

The basic operation of a phone card in the improved PBX system is illustrated in Figure 3. When a phone goes off-hook at 70, the phone card generates a dial tone at 72. If the first digit dialed is not #, as determined at 74, the phone card looks to its list of available outgoing line cards and hunts for one which is not in use at 76. If it is determined at 78 that all the available line cards are in use, a busy signal is generated at 80. This may happen before the user completes dialing a complete phone number. If an available line card is in not in use, it is seized and interacted with at 82. In either case, busy or interaction with line card will continue until it is determined at 84 that the phone has gone on-hook, after which it will end at 86. As mentioned above, if the user dials ### or ##, configuration mode or configuration review is triggered. In addition, if a user dial #xy where 2<x<9 and 2<y<9, an extension matching that number is called. This is illustrated at 88 and 90 in Figure 3. Though not illustrated, it will be appreciated that if the number dialed does not correspond to an extension number in use, a busy signal or audio message will be played to indicate so.

As mentioned above, the new feature of maintaining multiple mailing lists coupled with the feature of maintaining a list of the mailing lists enables new enhanced interworking among cells which was previously not readily enabled. For example, if a phone card is provided with two mailing lists for speech streams, call waiting is readily enabled. The first call or group of calls is placed on the first mailing list. A call waiting call or group of calls is placed on the second mailing list. Flashing the switch hook and pressing a key toggles from the first mailing list to the second mailing list. This effects a move from the first call or group of calls to the second call or group of calls. An option can be provided to make both mailing lists active at the same time and thereby merge the two groups. Multiple mailing lists in a phone card can enable many "voice channels" so that a number of calls or call groups can be handled simultaneously. As used herein a channel may contain more than one call, i.e. may be a conference call. According to the preferred embodiment, one switches channels in a manner similar to that used with call waiting, i.e. by flashing the switch hook. Table 1, below, illustrates the many features enabled by multiple mailing lists and the list of lists . As shown in Table 1, ^Λ means hook flash.

Table 1

Referring now to Figure 4, a distributed processing system incorporating feature os the invention is illustrated generally as 100. The system 100 includes a plurality of cells 102, 104, 106, 108 each of which responds to an event by executing at least one script 102a, 104a, 106a, 108a. The cells are coupled to a communications network 110 through which they may exchange messages. At least one of the cells, e.g. 102, maintains at least one mailing list 102b containing the addresses or names of subscriber cells to which the cell 102 will send one or more messages in response to an event. According to one aspect of the invention, at least one cell, e.g. 104, is provided with means 104 b for modifying the mailing list(s) of another cell. According to a second aspect of the invention, at least one cell, e.g. 106, maintains a subscription list 106b which lists all of the mailing list to which the cell subscribes (or only those designated as important) . The cell with the subscription list also includes a "subscriptor" means 106c for maintaining its listing on the lists in the subscription list. According to a third aspect of the invention, one of the cells, e.g. 108, includes means 108b for modifying subscription lists in other cells. According to a fourth object of the invention, one of the cells, e.g. 102, maintains a plurality of mailing lists 102b, a list manager 102c, and preferably also a list 102d of the maintaining lists 102b. The list manager 102c has the ability to move subscribers from one list to another, add new subscribers, delete subscribers, make one or more lists active while the others are inactive, and make active lists inactive.

There have been described and illustrated herein several embodiments of a distributed processing system incorporating a plurality of cells with each cell being responsive to a type of event. While particular embodiments of the invention have been described, it is not intended that the invention be limited thereto, as it is intended that the invention be as broad in scope as the art will allow and that the specification be read likewise. Thus, while particular a particular embodiment has been disclosed with reference to software, it will be appreciated that the invention may be embodied in software, hardware, or combinations of software and hardware. It will therefore be appreciated by those skilled in the art that yet other modifications could be made to the provided invention without deviating from its spirit and scope as so claimed.

Claims

Claims :

1. A distributed processing system, comprising: a plurality of cells, each cell being responsive to an event and each cell including at least one executable script which is executed upon the occurrence of the event; and a communications means coupled to each of said cells for exchanging messages between cells, wherein a first cell maintains a mailing list of at least one subscriber cell to which said first cell sends at least one message upon the execution of the at least one executable script included with said first cell; and a) a second cell includes means for modifying said mailing list, or b) said at least one subscriber cell maintains a subscription list listing said mailing list and includes means for remaining listed on said mailing list, or c) said at least one subscriber cell maintains a subscription list listing said mailing list a at least one of said plurality of cells other than said at least one subscriber cell includes means for modifying said subscription list, or d) said first cell maintains a plurality of mailing lists, each listing at least one subscriber cell to which said first cell can send at least one message upon the execution of the at least one executable script included with said first cell.

2. A distributed processing system according to claim 1, wherein: said first cell maintains a list of said plurality of mailing lists.

3. A distributed processing system according to claim 1, wherein: said first cell includes means for moving said at least one subscriber cell from one of said plurality of mailing lists to another of said plurality of mailing lists.

4. A distributed processing system according to claim 1, wherein: said first cell includes means for making one of said plurality of mailing lists an active mailing list.

5. A distributed processing system according to claim 1, wherein: said first cell includes means for making more than one of said plurality of mailing lists an active mailing list.

6. A distributed processing system according to claim 1, wherein: said system is a PBX system, said first cell is associated with a line card, said at least one subscriber cell is associated with a phone card, and said second cell is associated with a call assistant.

7. A distributed processing system according to claim 1, wherein: said system is a PBX system, said first cell is associated with a line card, and said at least one subscriber cell is associated with a phone

8. A distributed processing system according to claim 1, wherein: said system is a PBX system, said first cell is associated with a line card, said at least one subscriber cell is associated with a phone card, and said at least one of said plurality of cells other than said at least one subscriber cell is associated with a call assistant .

9. A distributed processing system according to claim 1, wherein: said system is a PBX system, said plurality of mailing lists includes at least one list associated with parties to phone calls, said at least one list having at least two subscriber cells .

10. A method of distributing processes in a distributed processing system, comprising: a) providing a plurality of processing cells, each cell being responsive to an event and each cell including at least one executable script which is executed upon the occurrence of the event, a first cell maintaining a mailing list of at least one subscriber cell to which said first cell sends at least one message upon the execution of the at least one executable script included with said first cell; b) providing a communications means coupled to each of said cells for exchanging messages between cells; c) a step selected from the following list i) providing a second cell with means for modifying said mailing list; ii) providing said at least one subscriber cell with a subscription list and providing another cell with means for modifying the subscription list; iii) providing the first cell with a plurality of mailing lists and means for making one or more of the plurality of mailing lists active; or iv) providing the first cell with a plurality of mailing lists and means for moving subscribers from one list to another.