Patent ID: 8331221
Filing Date: 2012-12-11
Classification: H04L,H04N

Abstract:
1. An outage notification system comprising: a first communication network communicatively coupling a plurality of first communication units; a second communication network communicatively coupling a plurality of second communication units; a network monitoring unit communicatively coupled to the first communication network and configured to detect a failure in at least one of the plurality of first communication units or the first communication network; the plurality of second communication units communicatively coupled to the second communication network and operable to communicate with the first communication network only through the second communication network, wherein each of the second communication units is associated with a corresponding one or more of the first communication units, the plurality of first communication units is of a first type of device and the plurality of second communication units is of a second type of device, the first type and the second type being different; and a message alert unit communicatively coupled to the first communication network and the second communication network, the message alert unit configured to receive an alert notification from the network monitoring unit via the first communication network indicating a failure in at least one of the first communication units or the first communication network, the alert notification to the message alert unit from the network monitoring unit includes an indicator of a type of failure and a general location on the first communication network where the failure is occurring in response to detecting that the failure is occurring within the first communication network, wherein, the message alert unit is configured to extract a location indicator and a failure type from the alert notification, querying a communications address list for first communications units affected by the failure, store the results of the communications address list query as a distribution list, perform a second query of the communications address list for second communications units assigned to the first communication units in the distribution list, insert the results of the second communications address list query into the distribution list and transmit a message via the second communication network without traversing the first network to the second communication units associated with at least one of the first communication units included on the distribution list, wherein the network monitoring unit and message alert unit are both located within a network operation center, while the plurality of first communication units and the plurality of second communication units are located outside the network operation center.