| 摘要 |
The present invention allows end user enterprises to achieve specific objectives in the management and enforcement of policies related to the use of telecommunications services in a telecommunications network. It was conceived for use in connection with traditional telephone networks that carry voice, facsimile or voice-band-data (VBD) traffic, though it is not necessarily limited to such networks. It involves active measurement of the properties of traffic on a communications channel, and the use of such knowledge in the conditional performance of prescribed actions based on the traffic properties. The prescribed actions have the effect of blocking usage of telecommunications service by traffic with specified properties under specified conditions. The prescribed actions can be disabled to make it operative for collection of data on the degree of compliance with service usage policies. The prescribed actions can also involve selecting or configuring a downstream telecommunications service for carriage of traffic with the observed traffic properties. Signal processing is used to measure the properties of traffic present on a channel at a given point in time, and prescribed actions are conditionally performed based on said traffic properties when service usage policies are determined to have been violated. Embodiments of the invention can be used to provide a phone service control platform (Phonewall) for establishing separate telecommunications service access policies for voice, facsimile and VBD, and for actively performing the necessary monitoring, policing and record generation to ensure compliance with these policies. This provides a superior means of minimizing the threat of unauthorized modems to computer security by blocking modem use on lines that do not have specific devices and protocols for fraud control. The threat of long distance fraud through generation of a "flash-hook" from a modem can be mitigated by declaring all lines that are attached to authorized modems to be "modem-only" lines: illegal voice calls are terminated as soon as the conversation starts. Declaring all lines connected to fax machines to be "fax-only" lines serves to block the threat of unauthorized long distance calls through facsimile machines. Finally, the categorization of traffic as voice, facsimile and VBD allows for strategic selection of telecommunications services to best match the intended usage.
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