A telephone network includes multiple telephone exchanges that are interconnected through trunk lines and signaling networks. A telephone user belongs to a specified telephone exchange, usually the exchange where the telephone user opens an account. NP means that telephone users can change their access points and even their operators, without changing their telephone numbers. As required by the times, the NP technology meets the requirement for keeping original telephone numbers when people change their addresses and working places, breaks the monopoly, and facilitates users to choose freely among different operators. NP appears first in fixed telephone networks and then in mobile telephone networks. In the countries and regions where mobile services develop fast, mobile NP develops fast.
An NP service is a service in which resources are shared inside a telephone network. FIG. 1 shows a networking diagram for implementing an NP service in the prior art. As shown in FIG. 1, when the access point of a user changes, a service applying and managing unit submits the NP data ((B, B′) of the user to an NP number management center. In the (B, B′), B indicates a called user number and B′ indicates the routing number of the new access point. As a data center controlled by the telephone supervision department, the NP number management center is a network-wide infrastructure and is used to check the validity of the (B, B′) and deliver the valid (B, B′) to various local service management systems. Each local service management system delivers the received (B, B′) to the connected local NP databases. Each local NP database records the NP data of each user.
When user A calls user B, the access telephone exchange of user A receives the call, queries the local NP database for B′ of the new access point of user B, and routes B′ to user B.
During the implementation of the present invention, the inventor discovers at least the following problems in the prior art:
(1) Each local NP database needs to store the NP data of all the users on the network, which requires that each local NP database should have a large storage space. The updated NP data of any user on the telephone network needs to be synchronized to each local NP database as soon as possible, which occupies the processing resources of each local NP database. In addition, each local NP database stores the data of all the users on the network, which causes possible security problems.
(2) The NP data is transmitted through the NP number management center, local service management system, and local NP database. The local service management system only supports data relay, which increases the complexity and investments.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds