Patent ID: 7869361
Filing Date: 2011-01-11
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A virtual router (VR) based telecommunications apparatus comprising: a storage device having embodied therein instructions, which when executed, implement within a VR of the VR-based telecommunications apparatus a subscriber manager, a profile manager, a policy engine and a virtual interface; and one or more processors coupled to the storage device configured to execute the instructions, where each of a plurality of service contexts available to subscribers of a service provider are defined in terms of one or more profile identifiers of a plurality of profile identifiers each of which is representative of a particular subscriber service supported by the service provider; the policy engine maintains a scalable subscriber profile database in which a memory requirement for the scalable subscriber profile database is dependent upon a number of available service contexts by hierarchically organizing the plurality of profile identifiers as intermediate profile identifiers and leaf profile identifiers, wherein the leaf profile identifiers explicitly define subscriber services and the intermediate profile identifiers indirectly represent sets of one or more subscriber services, which are defined by way of the intermediate profile identifiers' associations with one or more lower-level identifiers including zero or more of the leaf profile identifiers and zero or more of the intermediate profile identifiers; the scalable subscriber profile database is distributed between an authentication system of the service provider and a plurality of virtual routers (VRs), wherein a first portion of the scalable subscriber profile database is stored within the authentication system, the first portion of the scalable subscriber profile database including information indicative of associations among the subscribers and corresponding first-level profile identifiers representing a subset of the intermediate profile identifiers and a second portion of the scalable subscriber profile database is stored within the profile manager operable within each of the plurality of VRs, the second portion including information indicative of the associations among the subset of intermediate profile identifiers and the one or more lower-level identifiers; the subscriber manager receives a connection request from a subscriber of the plurality of subscribers and an intermediate profile identifier associated with the connection request and configures the virtual interface in accordance with a subscriber connection service for the subscriber; responsive to a request from the subscriber manager, the profile manager returns information regarding the subscriber connection service for the subscriber by returning to the subscriber the one or more lower-level profile identifiers associated with the intermediate profile identifier, wherein returning the information regarding the subscriber connection service includes requesting, from the first portion of the scalable profile database, the first-level profile identifier and requesting, from the second portion of the scalable profile database, the one or more lower-level profile identifiers associated with the first level profile identifier; and the virtual interface applies the subscriber connection service to data packets received from the subscriber.