Patent ID: 9591147
Date: 2017-03-07
CPC Classifications: G06Q,H04M

Claim:
1. A method of managing contracts for a consumption type service which includes smoothing requests for enactment of user equipment (“UE”) contracts, the method comprising: determining a time-to-live in respect of each UE contract; determining an estimate of a number of concurrent requests for contracts to occur at predetermined future time intervals; modifying the actual issued time-to-live in respect of at least some of the enacted UE contracts to minimize network load; determining a trust-rating for at least some of the UE's contracted to a service provider for the consumption type service; modifying the trust-rating for such UE over time to more accurately reflect the actual trustworthiness of contract requests emanating from such UE; conducting verification of a UE trust-rating by verifying data received from the UE that relates to its trust-rating, conducting the verification done more frequently for a UE with a lower trust-rating and less frequently for a UE with a higher trust-rating; and conducting the verification less frequently for a UE the longer it remains contracted to the specific service provider.