Equal access to inter-exchange carriers in a mobile wireless packet data communication system

摘要

The present invention discloses an improvement to a wireless packet data communication system by permitting a subscriber using a mobile end system (M-ES) (205) to select the inter-exchange carrier (IXC) (222 or 224) which will carry the data over those network paths for which the subscriber bears the cost during a particular communication session. The present invention allows the subscriber to specify a preferred inter-exchange carrier in an optional preferred IXC field added to an end system hello message. During registration and authorization procedures, an identifier corresponding to the preferred inter-exchange carrier is transmitted between a serving mobile data intermediate system (MD-IS) (220) and a home MD-IS (240) in a preferred IXC field added to standard registration protocol messages. If the subscriber has specified a preferred inter-exchange carrier in the preferred IXC field, then this preferred inter-exchange carrier is given higher priority than a default preferred inter-exchange carrier selected when the user subscribes to the network services. Each MD-IS is provided with a new database (221,241) that maps inter-exchange carrier identifiers to a corresponding boundary router address associated with the preferred inter-exchange carrier in order to route data packets via the subscriber's preferred IXC. The present invention thus allows data to be sent over the subscriber's preferred inter-exchange carrier on paths in both the forward and reverse directions on a per session basis. <MATH>