Title of Invention	METHOD, SYSTEM AND DEVICE FOR INCREASING MULTIMEDIA MESSAGING SERVICE SYSTEM CAPACITY
Abstract	A method for increasing multimedia messaging service system capacity is provided, it comprises: a message distributing device determining a first multimedia messaging service center (MMSC) node for receiving multimedia message, and forwarding the multimedia message to a relay of the first MMSC node, after it having received multimedia message; the multimedia message being transmitted to a server of the first MMSC node by the relay of the first MMSC node, and stored in the server of the first MMSC node; the server of the first MMSC node corresponding to the relay of the first MMSC relay uniquely; the server of the first MMSC node sending the multimedia message to the receipt party via the relay of the first MMSC node and the message distributing device. A system and a device for increasing multimedia messaging service system capacity are provided, too. It can increase the capacity of multimedia messaging service system handling multimedia message service with the invention.

Title of Invention

METHOD, SYSTEM AND DEVICE FOR INCREASING MULTIMEDIA MESSAGING SERVICE SYSTEM CAPACITY

Abstract

A method for increasing multimedia messaging service system capacity is provided, it comprises: a message distributing device determining a first multimedia messaging service center (MMSC) node for receiving multimedia message, and forwarding the multimedia message to a relay of the first MMSC node, after it having received multimedia message; the multimedia message being transmitted to a server of the first MMSC node by the relay of the first MMSC node, and stored in the server of the first MMSC node; the server of the first MMSC node corresponding to the relay of the first MMSC relay uniquely; the server of the first MMSC node sending the multimedia message to the receipt party via the relay of the first MMSC node and the message distributing device. A system and a device for increasing multimedia messaging service system capacity are provided, too. It can increase the capacity of multimedia messaging service system handling multimedia message service with the invention.

Full Text	Field of the Invention The present invention relates to Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) technologies, and in particular to a method, system and device for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system. Background of the Invention The MMS is a further development of the Short Message Service (SMS) and the Enhanced Message Service (EMS) and provides a complete end-to-end solution for personal multimedia mobile communication services. The MMS enables both information transmission between mobile terminals and the diversity of contents including various combinations of picture, voice, image, data and text. As an open media access platform, the MMS can derive abundant content service applications from interactions between mobile users and Internet content providers. Emergence of the MMS and relevant applications provides operators with a new service increase point while consolidating and further expanding the achievements of operators already gained in message services, so that the operators can strengthen their core competitiveness and are preponderant in severe competition for the telecommunication operation service market. Figure 1 illustrates a diagram of a structure of an existing multimedia messaging service system and the connection relationship with the outside world. Referring to Figure 1, the system includes a relay and a server. Particularly, the relay is adapted to receive a multimedia message sent from a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) gateway, a mail server and a Service Provider (SP) server and to perform MM2 encoding of the multimedia message and then transmit it to the server for processing; to receive a message sent from the server and to perform MM1 encoding of a message intended for the WAP gateway and then transmit it to the gateway; to perform MM3 encoding of a message intended for the mail server and then transmit it to the mail server; and to perform MM7 encoding of a message intended for the SP and then transmit it to the mail server. The server is adapted to receive a multimedia message sent from the relay for storing and processing. The server can interoperate with an application server of an external network via a standard interface and provide a mobile terminal with abundant types of services. The relay and the server constitute a Multimedia Messaging Service Center (MMSC) node which performs protocols translation, content adaptation, storage and scheduling of a multimedia message and accomplishes an operation of transporting the multimedia message between different multimedia devices. In summary for above, only one MMSC node which processes all multimedia messages in the present network is present in the existing multimedia messaging service system. With an increasing of users of the multimedia messaging service, one node can not process all multimedia messages in a timely way due to a limited processing power of the single node, which may result in a service interruption and an influence upon the use by the users. For the problem of the limited processing power of the multimedia messaging service in the prior art, there are primarily two capacity extension methods adopted currently. One method is a dual-host scheme for a vertical capacity extension by means of extending a Central Processing Unit (CPU)/memory, but the processing power of a dual-host multimedia messaging service in this scheme may be at most a double of that of a single-host one. Further, the CPU/memory in a computer can not be extended infinitely, and consequently the processing power of its multimedia messaging service may still be limited. The other method is a capacity extension by segments. This method comprises a plurality of MMSC nodes, such as two MMSC nodes. Figure 2 is a schematic diagram of a structure of a multimedia messaging service system using a capacity extension by segments. Referring to Figure 2, the system divides mobile phone numbers with the beginning of 139102 into two number segments, in that 1391020-139104 is the first one whose service is processed by a server 1 and 1391025-139109 is the second one whose service is processed by a server 2. A sender sends a multimedia message to a load balancer. The load balancer determines a relay to receive the multimedia messaging service request according to its load balancing algorithm. The relay relays the multimedia messaging service request to a corresponding server according to a mobile phone number of the sender in a way that the service of the first number segment is processed by the server 1 and the service of the second number segment is processed by the server 2. The server stores the received multimedia message in a multimedia message storage module, reads the multimedia message from the multimedia message storage module upon determination of that a corresponding receiver can receive the multimedia message, and relays it to a relay which is determined according to loads of the relays, and the relay relays the multimedia message to the receiver. This method still has the following problems of limiting the processing power of the multimedia messaging system despite of an increased capacity thereof. Firstly, since the relays and the servers are separate modules, messages have to be relayed over the network, and the number of cross accesses between hosts is too large, which may result in the problem of a low speed of processing multimedia messages and limit the processing power of the multimedia messaging service system. Secondly, all the servers store received multimedia messages centrally into the multimedia message storage module. In the case of a large multimedia message service, an Input/Output (I/O) performance bottleneck of the multimedia message storage module may limit the speed of reading and writing of the multimedia messages, thereby limiting the processing power of the multimedia messaging service system. A demand of operators can not be satisfied in the case of a large service. Thirdly, the relays and the servers are separate modules and a situation may occur in which the relays and the servers have different loads due to a limitation of a service type variation, an interface, etc. For example, a relay is fully loaded and a server is far from a full load, which may result in a waste of resources. Fourthly, this method can not ensure that the two number segments have exactly uniform service, and the service is interrupted if one of the two servers fails due to an overload, which may affect the user experience. Summary of the Present Invention In view of above, an embodiment of the present invention provides a method for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system, which may increase a processing power of the multimedia messaging service system. An embodiment of the present invention provides a system for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system, which may increase a processing power of the multimedia messaging service system. An embodiment of the present invention provides an MMSC node for increasing a processing power of a multimedia messaging service system. To achieve the above objects, technical solutions of the embodiments of the present invention are realized as follows. A method for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system includes the steps of: determining, by a message distribution device upon receiving a multimedia message sent from a sender, a first Multimedia Messaging Service Center MMSC node to receive the multimedia message, and relaying the multimedia message to a relay of the first MMSC node; delivering, by the relay of the first MMSC node, the multimedia message to a server of the first MMSC node for storage, the server of the first MMSC node corresponding uniquely to the relay of the first MMSC node; and sending, by the server of the first MMSC node, the multimedia message to a receiver through the relay of the first MMSC node and the message distribution device. A Multimedia Messaging Service Center MMSC node includes a relay, a server one-to-one corresponding to the relay and a shared memory; the relay is adapted to receive a multimedia message sent from a message distribution device and relay the multimedia message to the server through the shared memory; the server is adapted to store the multimedia message sent from the relay and send the multimedia message to the relay through the shared memory, which is delivered to a receiver through the relay and the message distribution device; and the shared memory is adapted to transfer the message between the relay and the corresponding server. A system for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system, comprising at least two MMSC nodes as any of claims 9-10 and a message distribution device the message distribution device is adapted to receive the multimedia message, determine an MMSC node to process the multimedia message, relay the multimedia message to the relay of the MMSC node processing the multimedia message and receive and relay a multimedia message sent from the relay. As can be seen from the above solutions, the method, system and device for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system provided according to the embodiments of the present invention proposes a peer cluster solution for a capacity extension of a large capacity multimedia messaging service. In the present solution a relay and a server constitute correspondingly an independent MMSC node, so that processing of the same multimedia message is accomplished on the same node in the system, thereby reducing cross accesses between MMSC nodes and improving the speed of transferring the message. Since the server stores a received multimedia message by itself instead of centralized storage at a multimedia message storage module, each MMSC node can enable independently I/O reading and writing of the multimedia message, avoiding the problem of limited service processing of the multimedia messaging service system due to centralized reading and writing of the multimedia messages, and increasing the processing power of the multimedia messaging service system. Brief Description of the Drawings Figure 1 is a schematic diagram of a structure of an existing multimedia messaging service system and its connection relationship with the outside world; Figure 2 is a schematic diagram of a structure of a multimedia messaging service system using a capacity extension by segments; Figure 3 is a diagram of a structure of a system for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention; Figure 4 is a flow chart of a method for implementing a multimedia messaging service from a mobile terminal to a mobile terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention; Figure 5 is a flow chart of a method for implementing a multimedia messaging service from a mobile terminal to an SP according to another embodiment of the present invention; Figure 6 is a flow chart of a method for implementing a multimedia messaging service from an SP to a mobile terminal according to yet another embodiment of the present invention; Figure 7 is a flow chat of a method for forwarding outward a multimedia message service via an MM4 interface in the system as illustrated in Figure 3; Figure 8 is a flow chat of a method for forwarding inward a multimedia message service via an MM4 interface in the system as illustrated in Figure 3; and Figure 9 is a diagram of a structure of an MMSC node according to an embodiment of the present invention. Detailed Description of the Invention The present invention will be described in details hereinafter with reference to the drawings and the embodiments to make the objects, technical solution and advantages of the present invention more apparent. A method for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system according to an embodiment of the present invention provides a peer cluster solution for a horizontal capacity extension of a large capacity multimedia messaging service, and its primary idea is constituting a relay and a server correspondingly an MMSC node; a message distribution device determines an MMSC node to process the multimedia message upon receiving the multimedia message and relays the multimedia message to the relay of the MMSC node; the relay of the MMSC node relays the received multimedia message to the server uniquely corresponding to the relay and the server stores the multimedia message; and the server delivers the multimedia message through the corresponding relay corresponding and the message distribution device. A system for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system according to an embodiment of the present invention includes a message distribution device and at least two MMSC nodes. Particularly, the MMSC nodes include a relay and a server corresponding to the relay. The relay is adapted to transfer a message between the message distribution device and the server corresponding to the relay; and the server is adapted to receive and store the multimedia message sent from the relay corresponding to the server and to process and then transmit the multimedia message to the relay corresponding to the server. The message distribution device is adapted to receive the multimedia message, to determine an MMSC node to process the multimedia message, relay the multimedia message to the relay of the MMSC node and to receive the multimedia message sent from the relay and then relay the multimedia message. The peer cluster solution will be described below taking an example of a peer cluster architecture including four nodes. In this embodiment, a relay and a server corresponding to the relay constitute an MMSC node in a way that both the relay and the server process are incorporated on a host. A message distribution device in this embodiment is a load balancer. Figure 3 is a diagram of a structure of the system for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention. Referring to Figure 3, the system includes a load balancer, a switch and four separate MMSC nodes each consisting of a relay and a server corresponding to the relay. Particularly, the four MMSC nodes constitute two sets of dual hosts and each set of dual hosts includes two node resource groups. Each node resource group has its own independent array of disks, or two node resource groups share a same array of disks, and each node resource group has its own dual-host Float Internet Protocol (FIP) address. All of the MMSC nodes in the system are numbered uniformly, and a port number of the server of the MMSC node is determined according to the type of a multimedia message receiver. The port number of the server indicates an application process of the server. For example, if a multimedia message is to be sent to a mobile terminal through a WAP gateway, a port number of the server of the MMSC node 1 may be 8001 and a port number of the server of the MMSC node 2 may be 8002. If a multimedia message is to be sent to a mail server or another MMSC node, the port number of the server of the MMSC node 1 may be 2501 and the port number of the server of the MMSC node 2 may be 2502. If a multimedia message is to be sent to an SP, the port number of the server of the MMSC node 1 may be 8801 and the port number of the server of the MMSC node 2 may be 8802. The FTP address of the MMSC node indicates an Internet Protocol (IP) address of the MMSC node and may also be set by means of the same sequential numbering as above. When the load balancer receives a multimedia message sent through the WAP gateway by a mobile terminal, the load balancer determines an MMSC node to process the multimedia message, such as the MMSC node 1, according to load conditions of the MMSC nodes and relays the multimedia message to the relay 1 of the MMSC node 1; and the relay 1 performs protocol translation of the multimedia message and then delivers it to the corresponding server 1. The server 1 processes the multimedia message upon receiving the multimedia message and generates identification information including node number information. The identification information includes a Transaction ID and a Message ID. If the multimedia message is a message to be sent to the mail server, the server 1 generates a response message and sends it to the corresponding relay 1. The relay 1 performs protocol translation of the response message and then sends it to the load balancer. The load balancer performs IP address translation (NAT, Network Address Translation) of the IP header of the response message and then sends it to the WAP gateway. Also, the server 1 sends the multimedia message to the load balancer through the corresponding relay 1. The load balancer performs source IP address translation (SNAT, Source Network Address Translation) of the IP header of the multimedia message and then sends it to the mail server. If the multimedia message is a message to be sent to an SP server, the server 1 sends a response message to the WAP gateway through the corresponding relay 1 and the load balancer. The server 1 sends the multimedia message to the load balancer, and the load balancer stores session information of the multimedia message upon receiving the multimedia message, and performs SNAT of the IP header of the multimedia message and then sends it to the SP. The SP sends a response message to the load balancer upon receiving the multimedia message. The load balancer sends the response message to the relay 1 of the MMSC node 1 according to the stored session information. If the multimedia message is a message to be sent through the WAP gateway by a mobile terminal to another mobile terminal, the server 1 generates a response message and a notification message respectively, sends the response message through the corresponding relay 1 to the WAP gateway and sends the notification message through the corresponding load balancer to the WAP gateway. The WAP gateway sends the messages to the mobile terminal according to address information in the messages. The notification message includes the identification information carrying the MMSC node number information and a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of the notification message carries the port number of the server 1 receiving the multimedia message, such as 8001. The WAP gateway sends to the load balancer a notification response message carrying the identification information. The load balancer determines an MMSC node to receive the notification response message, such as the MMSC node 2, according to load conditions of the MMSC nodes and sends the notification response message to the relay 2 of the MMSC node 2. The relay 2 sends the notification response message through a switch to the server of the MMSC node, such as server 1, according to the identification information of the notification response message, and the server of the MMSC node corresponds to the MMSC node number information of the identification information. Then, the mobile terminal sends through the WAP gateway to the load balancer a message retrieval request carrying the port number and the identification information of the server 1. The load balancer sends the message retrieval request to the server corresponding to the server port number, such as the server 1, according to the server port number of the message retrieval request upon receiving the message retrieval request. The server 1 finds the multimedia message corresponding to the identification information of the message retrieval request upon receiving the message retrieval request, and sends it to the mobile terminal through the corresponding relay 1, the load balancer and the WAP gateway. The mobile terminal sends to the load balancer through the WAP gateway a success message meaning successful download carrying the identification information. The load balancer determines an MMSC node to receive the success message, such as the MMSC node 3, according to load conditions of the MMSC nodes upon receiving the success message and sends it to the relay 3 of the MMSC node 3. The relay 3 sends the success message to the server of the MMSC node corresponding to the MMSC node number information of the identification information, such as the server 1, according to the identification information of the success message. The load balancer receives a multimedia message sent from the SP, and determines an MMSC node to receive the multimedia message, such as the MMSC node 1, according to load conditions of the MMSC nodes and sends the multimedia message to the relay 1 of the MMSC node 1. The relay 1 performs protocol translation of the multimedia message and then delivers it to the corresponding server 1. Then the multimedia message is delivered in the above flow of sending the multimedia message to the mobile terminal through the WAP gateway. The load balancer receives a multimedia message sent from the mail server, and determines an MMSC node to receive the multimedia message, such as the MMSC node 1, according to load conditions of the MMSC nodes and sends the multimedia message to the relay 1 of the MMSC node 1. The relay 1 performs protocol translation of the multimedia message and then delivers it to the corresponding server 1. The server 1 generates a response message and sends it to the mail server through the corresponding relay 1 and the load balancer. Then the multimedia message is delivered in the above flow of sending the multimedia message to the mobile terminal through the WAP gateway. Since underlying platforms for all components of the MMSC nodes in the system are based upon the same message bus and an appropriate communication manner can be selected automatically according to a connection deployment, therefore communication between the hosts is conducted through the switch and communication internal in the host is conducted through a shared memory. That is, for a session initiation message, a relay delivers it to the server located in the same host as the relay through a shared memory; and for a transaction handling process, the relay delivers a message to a server processing the present session according to identification information of the message; and a message initiated from a server is delivered to a relay on the present host through a shared memory. Normally, the two sets of resource groups in the dual hosts of the system operate respectively on two single hosts among the dual hosts. When one single host among the dual hosts fails due to the host or application software, the entire resource group on the host is switched to the other host through the switch for operating. When a process of the relay/server of the failing host is operated, the original FTP address is still in use, and an IP address in a multimedia message processed on the relay and the server is not changed, so that the failure of the host has no influence upon processing of the multimedia message. At this time, two sets of relays/servers operate on a host, and each set can use only a half of CPU and memory resources of the system, so a processing power of each set of relay/server is halved but this does not influence the effectiveness of the entire system, both the message buffered due to the failure and the ongoing session processing is reserved, and only a new message submitted during switching due to the failure is lost. In this case, since the load balancer can balance loads of the respective MMSC nodes, a sum of processing powers of the two sets of relays/servers of the entire host can be substantially equivalent to that of a normal cluster node, that is, a system with a number N of MMSC nodes loses 1/N of a processing power of the system upon failure of a single point. In this embodiment, the system with four hosts loses 25% of the processing power. In a practical application, the larger the N is, the lower the proportion of loss will be. Further, the relay in this embodiment of the present invention are components implemented by software, and an initial memory is not allocated in a way with the consistency of a maximum memory and a minimum memory but is scheduled automatically by software so as to reduce a memory occupied during switching due to a failure. Three embodiments are described below respectively. The message distribution device in the three embodiments is a load balancer. The method that the load balancer determines an MMSC node to receive a multimedia messaging service request is selecting an MMSC node whose load is minimum among all the MMSC nodes. The method includes following three methods. In one method, the load balancer sends detection information to the MMSC nodes upon receiving a multimedia messaging service request, receives response information from the respective MMSC nodes, and determines the most rapidly responding node as the node with the minimum load. In another method, upon receiving a new multimedia messaging service request, the load balancer records the number of multimedia messaging service requests processed by each MMSC node, and determines the node currently processing the smallest number of multimedia messaging service requests as the node with the minimum load. In yet another method, load of each MMSC node resource group is calculated according to CPU model numbers, the number of CPUs, a memory, and the number of current connections of the MMSC node resource group, and the node with the minimum load is determined as the node with the minimum load. A specific conversion process is known in the prior art and descriptions thereof will be omitted here. A relay and a server corresponding to the relay in the embodiments of the present invention operate on the same host to constitute an independent MMSC node. A message received by the relay can be delivered directly to the server corresponding to the relay through a shared memory, and the server delivers a message for transmission directly to the relay corresponding to the server through the shared memory. The One Embodiment Referring to Figure 4, Figure 4 is a flow chart of a method for implementing a multimedia messaging service sent by a mobile terminal to another mobile terminal according to the one embodiment of the present invention. The method includes the following steps. Steps 400 to 402: A sender sends an MM1 multimedia message submit request (MMl_Submit.req) to the load balancer through the WAP gateway. The load balancer sends the multimedia message to the relay of the minimum load. MMSC node, such as the relay 1. The relay 1 performs MM2 encoding of the multimedia message and then submits it to the server 1 on the present node through a shared memory. In this step, before the sender sends the multimedia message to the load balancer, a Transfer Control Protocol (TCP) connection is firstly established between the sender, the gateway and load balancer, and a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) connection is established between the load balancer and the relay of the MMSC node. Data transmission between the sender and the MMSC node is enabled through the two connections. A specific process of establishing the connections is known in the prior art and descriptions thereof will be omitted here. Steps 403 to 405: The server 1 stores the multimedia message upon receiving the multimedia message, performs processing such as format translation and the like, and returns a response message to the relay 1 of the host. The server 1 also generates identification information including node number information. The relay 1 performs MM1 encoding of the received response message and then returns it to the load balancer in the original HTTP connection. The load balancer performs an NAT operation on the IP header of the response message and then sends it to the WAP gateway through the established TCP connection, and in turn the WAP gateway relays the message to the sender according to a sender address in the response message. Step 406: The server 1 constructs a MM2 notification message (MM2_Notification.ind) and delivers it to the relay 1 on the present node. The notification message includes the identification information generated by the MMSC node 1, where the identification information includes the node number information of the present node, and address information of a receiver. A URL of the notification message carries the port number of the server of the node, such as 8001, and an IP address of the URL is a outward-mapped public IP address of the multimedia messaging service system. Steps 407 to 408: The relay 1 performs MM1 encoding of the notification message and then sends it to the load balancer. The load balancer performs an SNAT operation on the notification message and then sends it to the WAP gateway according to the receiver address in the notification message. The WAP gateway relays the message to the receiver. Step 409: The receiver responds with an MM1 notification response message (MMl_NotifyResp.ind) upon receiving the notification message. The notification response message carries the identification information of the notification message. A response address is an information server address set by a mobile terminal, that is, an SNAT operated source IP address, and thus points to the load balancer. Step 410: The load balancer determines the MMSC node with the minimum load upon receiving the notification response message, and sends the notification response message to the relay of the MMSC node with the minimum load, such as the relay 2 of the MMSC node 2. Step 411: The relay 2 performs MM2 encoding upon receiving the notification response message while recognizing the identification information of the notification response message, and relays the notification response message to the server of the MMSC node corresponding to the MMSC node number information of the identification information. In this step, the server receiving the notification response message is a server processing the present session. The server receiving the notification response message is server 1 in this embodiment. Step 412: The WAP gateway sends an MM1 message retrieval request (MMlRetrieve.req) message of the sender to the load balancer. The request message includes a message identifier of the multimedia message, and URL of the multimedia message includes the port number of the server processing the multimedia message to be downloaded, such as 8001 in this embodiment. Steps 413 to 414: The load balancer distributes the message retrieval request to the relay on the MMSC node processing the present transaction, according to the port number in the URL of the request message. The relay is relay 1 in this embodiment. The relay 1 performs MM2 encoding of the request message and sends it to the server 1 of the MMSC node through the shared memory. Steps 415 to 417: The server 1 searches in all multimedia messages stored on itself the corresponding multimedia message according to the message identifier in the request message, and returns the corresponding multimedia message to the relay 1 through the shared memory. The relay 1 performs MM1 encoding of the multimedia message and then sends it to the load balancer in the original HTTP connection. The load balancer performs an NAT operation on the IP header of the multimedia message and then sends it to the gateway through the reserved TCP connection. The WAP gateway relays the multimedia message to the receiver. Steps 418 to 420: The receiver sends an MM1 success message(MMl_acknowledge.ind) carrying the transaction identification information to its information server, i.e., the load balancer, upon receiving the multimedia message. The load balancer relays the success message to the relay of the MMSC node with the minimum load, such as the relay 2. The relay 2 performs MM2 encoding upon receiving the success message while recognizing the identification information in the message, and relays the success message to the server, a server processing the present session, of the MMSC node corresponding to the MMSC node number information of the identification information. The server processing the present session is server 1 in this embodiment. The server 1 upon receiving the success message deletes the stored multimedia message and releases the resources, thereby terminating present transaction processing. In the above steps, the steps 400 to 405 constitute a process in which the sender submits the multimedia message and receives the response message with which the server responds, and the steps 406 to 411 constitute a process in which the server sends the notification message to the receiver and receives the notification response message; and the steps 412 to 420 constitute a process in which the receiver receives the multimedia message and sends the success message. The Another Embodiment Referring to Figure 5, Figure 5 is a flow chart of a method for implementing a multimedia messaging service sent by a mobile terminal to an SP according to the another embodiment of the present invention and the method includes the following steps. The steps 500 to 505 constitute a process in which a mobile terminal of the sender submits a multimedia message and receives a response from an MMSC node, and are the same as the steps 400 to 405 in the embodiment as illustrated in Figure 4. Steps 506 to 508: The server 1 constructs an MM2 multimedia message delivery request message (MM2_Delivery.req), and the relay 1 of the node encodes it into an MM7 multimedia message delivery request message (MM7_Delivery.req) and then sends it to the load balancer. The load balancer performs an SNAT operation on the request message and then sends it to a corresponding SP according to address information of a receiver in the request message, i.e., an IP address of the SP. Steps 509 to 510: The SP sends an MM7 response message (MM7_Delivery.res) to the load balancer. The load balancer relays the response message to the relay of the MMSC node processing the present session, according to the stored session information. The relay of the MMSC node processing the present session is relay 1 in this embodiment. Since the MM7_Delivery.req/res are in a socket session, the load balancer deliver the MM7_Delivery.res to the node processing the present transaction according to the stored session information. Step 511: The relay 1 receives and performs MM2 encoding of the response message and sends it to the sever 1. The server 1 upon receiving the response message deletes the stored multimedia message and releases the resources, thereby terminating present transaction processing. The steps 506 to 511 in this embodiment constitute a process in which the server of the MMSC node delivers the multimedia message to the SP and receives a response message from the SP. If the SP is replaced with a mail server, then the steps 506 to 508 are as follows. The server 1 constructs an MM2 multimedia message sending request message (MMSMTPSend), and the relay 1 of the node performs MM3 encoding and then sends it to the load balancer. The load balancer performs an SNAT operation of the request message and then sends it to the corresponding mail server according to the address information of the receiver, i.e., the IP address of the mail server. The steps 509 to 511 may be omitted. The Yet Another Embodiment Referring to Figure 6, Figure .6 is a flow chart of a method for implementing a multimedia messaging service from an SP to a mobile terminal according to the yet another embodiment of the present invention and the method includes the following steps. Steps 600 to 602: An SP submits an MM7 multimedia message submit request (MM7_Submit.req) message to the load balancer. The load balancer determines the MMSC node with the minimum load and sends the request message to relay of the MMSC node with the minimum load, such as the relay 1. The relay 1 performs MM2 encoding of the request message and then submits it to the server 1 through a shared memory. Steps 603 to 605: The server 1 processes the request message and returns an MM2 response message (MM2_Submit.res). The relay 1 receives the response message, performs MM7 encoding and returns it to the load balancer in the original HTTP connection; and the load balancer performs an NAT operation on the IP header of the response message and then sends it to the SP through the reserved TCP connection. The steps 606 to 620 may be the same as the steps 406 to 420. In this embodiment, the steps 600 to 605 constitute a process in which the SP submits the multimedia message and receives the response message, the steps 606 to 611 sends for the server the notification message to the receiver and receives the response message with which it responds, and the steps 612 to 620 constitute a process in which the receiver retrieves the multimedia message and sends the success message. If the SP is replaced with a mail server, then step 800 is that the mail server submits an MM3 multimedia message submit request (MM3_SMTP.Send) to the load balancer, and the steps 603 to 605 may be omitted while the other steps remain the same. When a sender and a receiver of a multimedia message are not in the same network, an MMSC node to which the sender belongs forwards the received multimedia message to an MMSC node to which the receiver belongs for processing. A flow chart of the method at this time is as illustrated in Figure 7. Referring to Figure 7, the method includes the following steps. Steps 700 to 702: The server 1 of the MMSC node receiving a multimedia messaging service request constructs contents of a multimedia message to be relayed and control information into an MM2 forward request message (MM2_Forward.req). The control information includes identification information and an address of a receiver. The relay 1 encodes it into an MM4 forward request message (MM4_Forward.req) and then sends it to the load balancer. The load balancer performs an SNAT operation of the forward request message and then sends it to an MMSC node to which the receiver belongs. Steps 703 to 705: The MMSC node to which the receiver belongs sends an MM4 forward response message (MM4_Forward.res) to the load balancer upon receiving the forward request message. The load balancer sends the response message to the relay of the MMSC node with the minimum load, such as the relay 2. In turn the relay 2 parses the identification information of the response message and routes the response message to a server processing the session, the server 1 in this embodiment. Steps 706 to 708: The MMSC node receiving the forward request message sends an MM4 report message of multimedia message relaying success (MM4_DeliveryReport.rep) to the load balancer upon successful issuing of the multimedia message. The load balancer relays it to the relay with the minimum load, such as the relay 2. The relay 2 parses the identification information in the report message and routes the report message to a server processing the session, the server 1 in this embodiment. Steps 709 to 711: The server 1 sends an MM4 report response message (MM4_Deliver.res) to the load balancer through the relay 1 on the node. The load balancer performs an SNAT operations of the response message and then sends it to the MMSC node receiving the forward request message to which the receiver belongs, thereby terminating present transaction processing. In this embodiment, the steps 700 to 705 constitute a process in which the MMSC node receiving the multimedia messaging service request sends the MM4 forward request message and receives the forward response message, and the steps 706 to 711 constitute a process in which the MMSC node to which the receiver belongs sends the MM4 report message of multimedia message relaying success upon successful relaying of the multimedia message and receives the report response message. When an MMSC node to which the sender belongs sends the forward request, an MMSC node receiving the forward request message in the receiving network proceeds with an inward forward flow. It is assumed that the receiver is a mobile terminal, and Figure8 illustrates a flow chart of a method for inward MM4 forward. Referring to Figure 8, the method includes the following steps. Steps 800 to 802: An MMSC node to which the sender belongs submits an MM4 forward request message (MM4_Forward.req) to the load balancer. The load balancer sends the request message to the relay of the node with the minimum load in the receiving network, such as the relay 2. The relay 2 distributes it to the server 1 according to a message identifier in the request message. It is required in this step that multimedia messages with the same message identifier shall be distributed to the same server. Steps 803 to 805: The server 1 constructs an MM2 forward request response message (MM2_Forward.res) upon receiving the request message, and the relay 1 on the node encodes it into an MM4 forward request response message (MM4_Forward.res) and then sends the message to the load balancer. The server 1 records the old message identifier and transaction identifier and generates a new message identifier and transaction identifier. The load balancer receives the forward request response message sent from the relay and then performs an SNAT operation on the response message and relays it to the MMSC node sending the forward request message in the sending network. Step 806: The server 1 constructs an MM2 notification message (MM2_Notification.ind) to be sent to a mobile terminal of the receiver with the new message identifier and transaction identifier and sends the message to the relay 1 on the node. In this step, a URL in the notification message includes the port number of the server processing the transaction, such as 8001. The steps 807 to 820 are the same as the steps 407 to 420 in the flow of the method for implementing a multimedia messaging service method from a mobile terminal to a mobile terminal according to the first embodiment of Figure 4 and descriptions thereof will be omitted here. Steps 821 to 823: The server 1 generates an MM2 report message of multimedia message relaying success (MM2_DeliveryReport.req) including information on the old message identifier and the new transaction identifier. The relay 1 of the node encodes it into an MM4 report message of multimedia message relaying success (MM4_DeliveryReport.req) and then sends it to the load balancer. The load balancer performs an SNAT operation on the report message and then sends it to the MMSC node sending the forward request message in the sending network according to the information on the old message identifier. Steps 824 to 825: The MMSC node sending the forward request message in the sending network returns an MM4 report response message (MM4_DeliveryReport.res) to the load balancer upon receiving the report message of multimedia message relaying success; and the load balancer sends the response message to the relay of the MMSC node with the minimum load, such as the relay 2. Step 826: The relay routes the message to the server 1 processing the session according to the identification information in the response message. In this embodiment, the steps 800 to 805 constitute a process in which the MM4 forward request message is received and the MM4 forward response is sent, the steps 806 to 811 constitute a process in which the notification message is sent to the mobile terminal and a process in which the notification response message is received from the mobile terminal, the steps 812 to 820 constitute a process in which the mobile terminal retrieves the multimedia message and sends the success message, and the steps 821 to 826 constitute a process in which an MMSC node to which the receiver belongs sends the report message of multimedia message relaying success upon successful relaying of the multimedia message and receives the report response message. The WAP gateway in the present invention can also be an IP gateway. In a practical application, the number of MMSC nodes in the system can be set as required for a service, less or more than four. Figure 9 is a diagram of a structure of an MMSC node according to an embodiment of the present invention. As illustrated in Figure 9, the node includes a relay, a server corresponding uniquely to the relay and a shared memory. Particularly, the relay is adapted to receive a multimedia message sent from a message distribution device and relay the multimedia message to the server through the shared memory. The server is adapted to store the multimedia message sent from the relay and send it to the relay through the shared memory. The multimedia message is delivered to a receiver through the relay and the message distribution device. The relay is adapted to transfer the multimedia message between the relay and the corresponding server. Specifically, the server includes a storage module adapted to store the multimedia message sent from the relay through the shared memory; an identification information generation module adapted to generate identification information including an information identifier and a transaction identifier upon receiving the multimedia message; and an issuing module adapted to deliver the multimedia message stored in the storage module to the receiver of a multimedia messaging service through the shared memory and the relay according to the identification information. The server further includes a determination module and a forward request generation module. Particularly, the determination module is adapted to determine whether address information of the receiver in the multimedia message belongs to the MMSC node; if yes, the issuing module delivers the multimedia message; otherwise, the forward request generation module generates a forward request message and sends it to the message distribution device through the shared memory and the relay. As can be seen from above, the method, system and device for implementing a large capacity multimedia messaging service provided according to the embodiments of the present invention propose a peer cluster solution for a horizontal capacity extension of a large capacity multimedia messaging service and have the following advantages. Firstly, the relay and the server are integrated to constitute an independent MMSC node, so that processing of contents of the same multimedia message is accomplished on the same node in the system, thereby reducing cross accesses between nodes, improving the efficiency of transferring the message and hence increasing the processing power of the multimedia messaging service system. Further, all MMSC nodes are numbered uniformly and number information is made correspond to the port number of the server, so that the message distribution device can send a message retrieval request directly to the MMSC node processing the session, and the relay can deliver the multimedia message directly to the corresponding server, thereby improving the efficiency of transferring the message, reducing greatly the demand for a transmission speed of network devices and increasing the processing power of the multimedia messaging service system. Secondly, each MMSC node can enable independently I/O reading and writing of a multimedia message, thereby optimizing the storage architecture of the multimedia message and avoiding the problem of limited service processing of the multimedia messaging service system due to centralized reading and writing of the multimedia messages. Further, the respective MMSC nodes in the peer cluster perform the multimedia messaging service concurrently, thereby improving the processing speed of the multimedia messages and hence increasing the processing power of the multimedia messaging service system. Thirdly, as new demands for the multimedia messaging service constantly emerge, a proportion of the demand for a processing power required for the relay and the server will vary dynamically, and the relay and the server are integrated on a host to constitute an independent node in the embodiments of the present invention, thereby achieving an online smooth extension of the system; and each MMSC node can adjust dynamically CPU and memory resources occupied for a relay and a server according to a practical consumption so as to be adapted to the varying service demand, thereby avoiding a waste of the resources. Fourthly, the load balancer determines an MMSC node to receive a service request according to a load condition of a relay and a server corresponding to the relay instead of allocating a service by number segments, and makes identification information generated by the server correspond to number information of the MMSC node, so that the relay can relay a message to the server processing the present service request, which corresponds to the node number information, according to the identification information, thereby achieving indeed a load balancer among the MMSC nodes. Fifthly, the inventive system is structured simply, and the respective MMSC nodes can be configured with the same system software and thus can be maintained and managed equally thereby improving maintainability of the system. WE CLAIM: 1. A method for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system, comprising the steps of: determining, by a message distribution device upon receiving a multimedia message sent from a sender, a first Multimedia Messaging Service Center MMSC node to receive the multimedia message, and relaying the multimedia message to a relay of the first MMSC node; delivering, by the relay of the first MMSC node, the multimedia message to a server of the first MMSC node for storage, wherein the server of the first MMSC node is one-to-one corresponding to the relay of the first MMSC node; and sending, by the server of the first MMSC node, the multimedia message to a receiver through the relay of the first MMSC node and the message distribution device. 2. The method according to claim 1, after the server of the first MMSC node stores the multimedia message, the method further comprises: generating, by the server of the first MMSC node, first identification information comprising a first message identifier and a first transaction identifier, wherein the first transaction identifier comprises number information of the first MMSC node. 3. The method according to claim 2, wherein the address information of the receiver in the multimedia message is in the network of the first MMSC node, the sending by the server of the first MMSC node of the multimedia message to the receiver through the relay of the first MMSC node and the message distribution device comprises: generating, by the server of the first MMSC node, a notification message comprising the first identification information and a Uniform Resource Locator URL; sending the notification message to the receiver through the relay of the first MMSC node and the load balancer; and retrieving, by the receiver, the multimedia message from the server according to the first identification information and the URL in the notification message. 4. The method according to claim 2, after the notification message is sent to the receiver, the method further comprises: returning, by the receiver, a notification response message comprising the first identification information to the load balancer; determining, by the load balancer, an MMSC node to receive the notification response message according to load conditions of the respective MMSC nodes and relaying it to the MMSC node receiving the notification response message; and relaying, by a relay of the MMSC node receiving the notification response message, the notification response message to the server of the first MMSC node according to the first identification information in the notification response message. 5. The method according to claim 4, wherein the URL of the notification message carries a port number of the server corresponding to the number information of the first MMSC node; the retrieving by the receiver of the multimedia message from the server according to the first identification information and the URL in the notification message comprises: sending, by the receiver, a message retrieval request carrying the port number to the load balancer; sending, by the load balancer, the message retrieval request to the relay of the first MMSC node according to the port number; delivering, by the relay of the first MMSC node, the message retrieval request to the server of the first MMSC node; and sending, by the server of the first MMSC node upon receiving the message retrieval request, the multimedia message to the receiver through the relay of the first MMSC node and the load balancer. 6. The method according to claim 2, wherein the address information of the receiver in the multimedia message is not in the network of the first MMSC node, the sending by the server of the multimedia message to the receiver through the relay of the first MMSC node and the message distribution device comprises: sending, by the server of the first MMSC node, a forward request message comprising the multimedia message to the load balancer through the relay of the first MMSC node; relaying, by the load balancer, the forward request message to an MMSC node to which the receiver belongs; and sending, by a second MMSC node which is an MMSC node receiving the multimedia message in a network of the receiver, the multimedia message to the receiver; and wherein the multimedia message carries the first identification information. 7. The method according to claim 6, wherein after the second MMSC node receives the forward request message, the server of the second MMSC node stores the first identification information carried in the multimedia message and generates second identification information comprising a second message identifier and a second transaction identifier. 8. The method according to claim 7, wherein the second MMSC node sends the multimedia message to the receiver according to the second identification information; after the second MMSC node sends the multimedia message to the receiver, the method further comprises: generating, by the server of the second MMSC node, a report message of multimedia message relaying success comprising the first identification information. 9. A Multimedia Messaging Service Center MMSC node, comprising a relay, a server one-to-one corresponding to the relay and a shared memory, wherein: the relay is adapted to receive a multimedia message sent from a message distribution device and relay the multimedia message to the server through the shared memory; the server is adapted to store the multimedia message sent from the relay and send the multimedia message to the relay through the shared memory, which is delivered to a receiver through the relay and the message distribution device; and the shared memory is adapted to transfer the message between the relay and the corresponding server. 10. The MMSC node according to claim 9, wherein the server comprises: a storage module, adapted to store the multimedia message sent from the relay through the shared memory; an identification information generation module, adapted to generate identification information comprising an information identifier and a transaction identifier upon receiving the multimedia message; and an issuing module, adapted to deliver the multimedia message stored in the storage module to the receiver of a multimedia messaging service through the shared memory and the relay according to the identification information. 11. A system for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system, comprising at least two MMSC nodes as any of claims 9-10 and a message distribution device, wherein: the message distribution device is adapted to receive the multimedia message, determine an MMSC node to process the multimedia message, relay the multimedia message to the relay of the MMSC node processing the multimedia message and receive and relay a multimedia message sent from the relay. 12. The system according to claim 11, wherein the server is further adapted to generate identification information comprising number information of the MMSC node. 13. The system according to claim 12, wherein the server is further adapted to generate a notification message comprising the identification information and a URL, and the URL comprises a port number of the server corresponding to the number information of the MMSC node. 14. The system according to claim 13, wherein the message distribution device is further adapted to receive a message retrieval request comprising the port number, recognize the port number and relay the message retrieval request to the server corresponding to the port number. 15. The system according to claim 12, wherein the relay is further adapted to recognize the identification information of the message received from the message distribution device and send the message to the server of the MMSC node corresponding to the number information of the MMSC node in the identification information. 16. The system according to claim 11, wherein the message distribution device is further adapted to store session information of the multimedia message, receive a response message carrying the session information and relay the response message to the relay of a corresponding MMSC node according to the session information. A method for increasing multimedia messaging service system capacity is provided, it comprises: a message distributing device determining a first multimedia messaging service center (MMSC) node for receiving multimedia message, and forwarding the multimedia message to a relay of the first MMSC node, after it having received multimedia message; the multimedia message being transmitted to a server of the first MMSC node by the relay of the first MMSC node, and stored in the server of the first MMSC node; the server of the first MMSC node corresponding to the relay of the first MMSC relay uniquely; the server of the first MMSC node sending the multimedia message to the receipt party via the relay of the first MMSC node and the message distributing device. A system and a device for increasing multimedia messaging service system capacity are provided, too. It can increase the capacity of multimedia messaging service system handling multimedia message service with the invention.

Full Text

Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS)
technologies, and in particular to a method, system and device for increasing a capacity
of a multimedia messaging service system.
Background of the Invention
The MMS is a further development of the Short Message Service (SMS) and the
Enhanced Message Service (EMS) and provides a complete end-to-end solution for
personal multimedia mobile communication services. The MMS enables both
information transmission between mobile terminals and the diversity of contents
including various combinations of picture, voice, image, data and text. As an open media
access platform, the MMS can derive abundant content service applications from
interactions between mobile users and Internet content providers. Emergence of the
MMS and relevant applications provides operators with a new service increase point
while consolidating and further expanding the achievements of operators already gained
in message services, so that the operators can strengthen their core competitiveness and
are preponderant in severe competition for the telecommunication operation service
market.
Figure 1 illustrates a diagram of a structure of an existing multimedia
messaging service system and the connection relationship with the outside world.
Referring to Figure 1, the system includes a relay and a server.
Particularly, the relay is adapted to receive a multimedia message sent from a
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) gateway, a mail server and a Service Provider (SP)
server and to perform MM2 encoding of the multimedia message and then transmit it to
the server for processing; to receive a message sent from the server and to perform MM1
encoding of a message intended for the WAP gateway and then transmit it to the gateway;
to perform MM3 encoding of a message intended for the mail server and then transmit it
to the mail server; and to perform MM7 encoding of a message intended for the SP and
then transmit it to the mail server.
The server is adapted to receive a multimedia message sent from the relay for
storing and processing. The server can interoperate with an application server of an
external network via a standard interface and provide a mobile terminal with abundant
types of services.

The relay and the server constitute a Multimedia Messaging Service Center
(MMSC) node which performs protocols translation, content adaptation, storage and
scheduling of a multimedia message and accomplishes an operation of transporting the
multimedia message between different multimedia devices.
In summary for above, only one MMSC node which processes all multimedia
messages in the present network is present in the existing multimedia messaging service
system. With an increasing of users of the multimedia messaging service, one node can
not process all multimedia messages in a timely way due to a limited processing power
of the single node, which may result in a service interruption and an influence upon the
use by the users.
For the problem of the limited processing power of the multimedia messaging
service in the prior art, there are primarily two capacity extension methods adopted
currently.
One method is a dual-host scheme for a vertical capacity extension by means of
extending a Central Processing Unit (CPU)/memory, but the processing power of a
dual-host multimedia messaging service in this scheme may be at most a double of that
of a single-host one. Further, the CPU/memory in a computer can not be extended
infinitely, and consequently the processing power of its multimedia messaging service
may still be limited.
The other method is a capacity extension by segments. This method comprises a
plurality of MMSC nodes, such as two MMSC nodes. Figure 2 is a schematic diagram of
a structure of a multimedia messaging service system using a capacity extension by
segments. Referring to Figure 2, the system divides mobile phone numbers with the
beginning of 139102 into two number segments, in that 1391020-139104 is the first one
whose service is processed by a server 1 and 1391025-139109 is the second one whose
service is processed by a server 2. A sender sends a multimedia message to a load
balancer. The load balancer determines a relay to receive the multimedia messaging
service request according to its load balancing algorithm. The relay relays the
multimedia messaging service request to a corresponding server according to a mobile
phone number of the sender in a way that the service of the first number segment is
processed by the server 1 and the service of the second number segment is processed by
the server 2. The server stores the received multimedia message in a multimedia message
storage module, reads the multimedia message from the multimedia message storage
module upon determination of that a corresponding receiver can receive the multimedia
message, and relays it to a relay which is determined according to loads of the relays, and

the relay relays the multimedia message to the receiver. This method still has the
following problems of limiting the processing power of the multimedia messaging
system despite of an increased capacity thereof.
Firstly, since the relays and the servers are separate modules, messages have to
be relayed over the network, and the number of cross accesses between hosts is too large,
which may result in the problem of a low speed of processing multimedia messages and
limit the processing power of the multimedia messaging service system.
Secondly, all the servers store received multimedia messages centrally into the
multimedia message storage module. In the case of a large multimedia message service,
an Input/Output (I/O) performance bottleneck of the multimedia message storage module
may limit the speed of reading and writing of the multimedia messages, thereby limiting
the processing power of the multimedia messaging service system. A demand of
operators can not be satisfied in the case of a large service.
Thirdly, the relays and the servers are separate modules and a situation may
occur in which the relays and the servers have different loads due to a limitation of a
service type variation, an interface, etc. For example, a relay is fully loaded and a server
is far from a full load, which may result in a waste of resources.
Fourthly, this method can not ensure that the two number segments have exactly
uniform service, and the service is interrupted if one of the two servers fails due to an
overload, which may affect the user experience.
Summary of the Present Invention
In view of above, an embodiment of the present invention provides a method
for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system, which may increase
a processing power of the multimedia messaging service system.
An embodiment of the present invention provides a system for increasing a
capacity of a multimedia messaging service system, which may increase a processing
power of the multimedia messaging service system.
An embodiment of the present invention provides an MMSC node for
increasing a processing power of a multimedia messaging service system.
To achieve the above objects, technical solutions of the embodiments of the
present invention are realized as follows.
A method for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system
includes the steps of:

determining, by a message distribution device upon receiving a multimedia
message sent from a sender, a first Multimedia Messaging Service Center MMSC node
to receive the multimedia message, and relaying the multimedia message to a relay of the
first MMSC node;
delivering, by the relay of the first MMSC node, the multimedia message to a
server of the first MMSC node for storage, the server of the first MMSC node
corresponding uniquely to the relay of the first MMSC node; and
sending, by the server of the first MMSC node, the multimedia message to a
receiver through the relay of the first MMSC node and the message distribution device.
A Multimedia Messaging Service Center MMSC node includes a relay, a server
one-to-one corresponding to the relay and a shared memory;
the relay is adapted to receive a multimedia message sent from a message
distribution device and relay the multimedia message to the server through the shared
memory;
the server is adapted to store the multimedia message sent from the relay and send
the multimedia message to the relay through the shared memory, which is delivered to a
receiver through the relay and the message distribution device; and
the shared memory is adapted to transfer the message between the relay and the
corresponding server.
A system for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system,
comprising at least two MMSC nodes as any of claims 9-10 and a message distribution
device
the message distribution device is adapted to receive the multimedia message,
determine an MMSC node to process the multimedia message, relay the multimedia
message to the relay of the MMSC node processing the multimedia message and receive
and relay a multimedia message sent from the relay.
As can be seen from the above solutions, the method, system and device for
increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system provided according to
the embodiments of the present invention proposes a peer cluster solution for a capacity
extension of a large capacity multimedia messaging service. In the present solution a
relay and a server constitute correspondingly an independent MMSC node, so that
processing of the same multimedia message is accomplished on the same node in the
system, thereby reducing cross accesses between MMSC nodes and improving the speed
of transferring the message. Since the server stores a received multimedia message by

itself instead of centralized storage at a multimedia message storage module, each
MMSC node can enable independently I/O reading and writing of the multimedia
message, avoiding the problem of limited service processing of the multimedia
messaging service system due to centralized reading and writing of the multimedia
messages, and increasing the processing power of the multimedia messaging service
system.
Brief Description of the Drawings
Figure 1 is a schematic diagram of a structure of an existing multimedia
messaging service system and its connection relationship with the outside world;
Figure 2 is a schematic diagram of a structure of a multimedia messaging
service system using a capacity extension by segments;
Figure 3 is a diagram of a structure of a system for increasing a capacity of a
multimedia messaging service system according to a preferred embodiment of the
present invention;
Figure 4 is a flow chart of a method for implementing a multimedia messaging
service from a mobile terminal to a mobile terminal according to an embodiment of the
present invention;
Figure 5 is a flow chart of a method for implementing a multimedia messaging
service from a mobile terminal to an SP according to another embodiment of the present
invention;
Figure 6 is a flow chart of a method for implementing a multimedia messaging
service from an SP to a mobile terminal according to yet another embodiment of the
present invention;
Figure 7 is a flow chat of a method for forwarding outward a multimedia
message service via an MM4 interface in the system as illustrated in Figure 3;
Figure 8 is a flow chat of a method for forwarding inward a multimedia
message service via an MM4 interface in the system as illustrated in Figure 3; and
Figure 9 is a diagram of a structure of an MMSC node according to an
embodiment of the present invention.
Detailed Description of the Invention
The present invention will be described in details hereinafter with reference to
the drawings and the embodiments to make the objects, technical solution and
advantages of the present invention more apparent.

A method for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system
according to an embodiment of the present invention provides a peer cluster solution for
a horizontal capacity extension of a large capacity multimedia messaging service, and its
primary idea is constituting a relay and a server correspondingly an MMSC node; a
message distribution device determines an MMSC node to process the multimedia
message upon receiving the multimedia message and relays the multimedia message to
the relay of the MMSC node; the relay of the MMSC node relays the received
multimedia message to the server uniquely corresponding to the relay and the server
stores the multimedia message; and the server delivers the multimedia message through
the corresponding relay corresponding and the message distribution device.
A system for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system
according to an embodiment of the present invention includes a message distribution
device and at least two MMSC nodes.
Particularly, the MMSC nodes include a relay and a server corresponding to the
relay.
The relay is adapted to transfer a message between the message distribution
device and the server corresponding to the relay; and the server is adapted to receive and
store the multimedia message sent from the relay corresponding to the server and to
process and then transmit the multimedia message to the relay corresponding to the
server.
The message distribution device is adapted to receive the multimedia message,
to determine an MMSC node to process the multimedia message, relay the multimedia
message to the relay of the MMSC node and to receive the multimedia message sent
from the relay and then relay the multimedia message.
The peer cluster solution will be described below taking an example of a peer
cluster architecture including four nodes. In this embodiment, a relay and a server
corresponding to the relay constitute an MMSC node in a way that both the relay and the
server process are incorporated on a host. A message distribution device in this
embodiment is a load balancer.
Figure 3 is a diagram of a structure of the system for increasing a capacity of a
multimedia messaging service system according to a preferred embodiment of the
present invention. Referring to Figure 3, the system includes a load balancer, a switch
and four separate MMSC nodes each consisting of a relay and a server corresponding to
the relay.

Particularly, the four MMSC nodes constitute two sets of dual hosts and each
set of dual hosts includes two node resource groups. Each node resource group has its
own independent array of disks, or two node resource groups share a same array of disks,
and each node resource group has its own dual-host Float Internet Protocol (FIP) address.
All of the MMSC nodes in the system are numbered uniformly, and a port number of the
server of the MMSC node is determined according to the type of a multimedia message
receiver. The port number of the server indicates an application process of the server. For
example, if a multimedia message is to be sent to a mobile terminal through a WAP
gateway, a port number of the server of the MMSC node 1 may be 8001 and a port
number of the server of the MMSC node 2 may be 8002. If a multimedia message is to be
sent to a mail server or another MMSC node, the port number of the server of the MMSC
node 1 may be 2501 and the port number of the server of the MMSC node 2 may be 2502.
If a multimedia message is to be sent to an SP, the port number of the server of the
MMSC node 1 may be 8801 and the port number of the server of the MMSC node 2 may
be 8802. The FTP address of the MMSC node indicates an Internet Protocol (IP) address
of the MMSC node and may also be set by means of the same sequential numbering as
above.
When the load balancer receives a multimedia message sent through the WAP
gateway by a mobile terminal, the load balancer determines an MMSC node to process
the multimedia message, such as the MMSC node 1, according to load conditions of the
MMSC nodes and relays the multimedia message to the relay 1 of the MMSC node 1;
and the relay 1 performs protocol translation of the multimedia message and then
delivers it to the corresponding server 1.
The server 1 processes the multimedia message upon receiving the multimedia
message and generates identification information including node number information.
The identification information includes a Transaction ID and a Message ID.
If the multimedia message is a message to be sent to the mail server, the server 1
generates a response message and sends it to the corresponding relay 1. The relay 1
performs protocol translation of the response message and then sends it to the load
balancer. The load balancer performs IP address translation (NAT, Network Address
Translation) of the IP header of the response message and then sends it to the WAP
gateway. Also, the server 1 sends the multimedia message to the load balancer through
the corresponding relay 1. The load balancer performs source IP address translation
(SNAT, Source Network Address Translation) of the IP header of the multimedia
message and then sends it to the mail server.

If the multimedia message is a message to be sent to an SP server, the server 1
sends a response message to the WAP gateway through the corresponding relay 1 and the
load balancer. The server 1 sends the multimedia message to the load balancer, and the
load balancer stores session information of the multimedia message upon receiving the
multimedia message, and performs SNAT of the IP header of the multimedia message
and then sends it to the SP. The SP sends a response message to the load balancer upon
receiving the multimedia message. The load balancer sends the response message to the
relay 1 of the MMSC node 1 according to the stored session information.
If the multimedia message is a message to be sent through the WAP gateway by
a mobile terminal to another mobile terminal, the server 1 generates a response message
and a notification message respectively, sends the response message through the
corresponding relay 1 to the WAP gateway and sends the notification message through
the corresponding load balancer to the WAP gateway. The WAP gateway sends the
messages to the mobile terminal according to address information in the messages. The
notification message includes the identification information carrying the MMSC node
number information and a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of the notification message
carries the port number of the server 1 receiving the multimedia message, such as 8001.
The WAP gateway sends to the load balancer a notification response message
carrying the identification information. The load balancer determines an MMSC node to
receive the notification response message, such as the MMSC node 2, according to load
conditions of the MMSC nodes and sends the notification response message to the relay
2 of the MMSC node 2. The relay 2 sends the notification response message through a
switch to the server of the MMSC node, such as server 1, according to the identification
information of the notification response message, and the server of the MMSC node
corresponds to the MMSC node number information of the identification information.
Then, the mobile terminal sends through the WAP gateway to the load balancer
a message retrieval request carrying the port number and the identification information
of the server 1. The load balancer sends the message retrieval request to the server
corresponding to the server port number, such as the server 1, according to the server port
number of the message retrieval request upon receiving the message retrieval request.
The server 1 finds the multimedia message corresponding to the identification
information of the message retrieval request upon receiving the message retrieval request,
and sends it to the mobile terminal through the corresponding relay 1, the load balancer
and the WAP gateway.
The mobile terminal sends to the load balancer through the WAP gateway a

success message meaning successful download carrying the identification information.
The load balancer determines an MMSC node to receive the success message, such as
the MMSC node 3, according to load conditions of the MMSC nodes upon receiving the
success message and sends it to the relay 3 of the MMSC node 3. The relay 3 sends the
success message to the server of the MMSC node corresponding to the MMSC node
number information of the identification information, such as the server 1, according to
the identification information of the success message.
The load balancer receives a multimedia message sent from the SP, and
determines an MMSC node to receive the multimedia message, such as the MMSC node
1, according to load conditions of the MMSC nodes and sends the multimedia message
to the relay 1 of the MMSC node 1. The relay 1 performs protocol translation of the
multimedia message and then delivers it to the corresponding server 1. Then the
multimedia message is delivered in the above flow of sending the multimedia message to
the mobile terminal through the WAP gateway.
The load balancer receives a multimedia message sent from the mail server, and
determines an MMSC node to receive the multimedia message, such as the MMSC node
1, according to load conditions of the MMSC nodes and sends the multimedia message
to the relay 1 of the MMSC node 1. The relay 1 performs protocol translation of the
multimedia message and then delivers it to the corresponding server 1. The server 1
generates a response message and sends it to the mail server through the corresponding
relay 1 and the load balancer. Then the multimedia message is delivered in the above
flow of sending the multimedia message to the mobile terminal through the WAP
gateway.
Since underlying platforms for all components of the MMSC nodes in the
system are based upon the same message bus and an appropriate communication manner
can be selected automatically according to a connection deployment, therefore
communication between the hosts is conducted through the switch and communication
internal in the host is conducted through a shared memory. That is, for a session initiation
message, a relay delivers it to the server located in the same host as the relay through a
shared memory; and for a transaction handling process, the relay delivers a message to a
server processing the present session according to identification information of the
message; and a message initiated from a server is delivered to a relay on the present host
through a shared memory.
Normally, the two sets of resource groups in the dual hosts of the system
operate respectively on two single hosts among the dual hosts. When one single host

among the dual hosts fails due to the host or application software, the entire resource
group on the host is switched to the other host through the switch for operating. When a
process of the relay/server of the failing host is operated, the original FTP address is still
in use, and an IP address in a multimedia message processed on the relay and the server
is not changed, so that the failure of the host has no influence upon processing of the
multimedia message. At this time, two sets of relays/servers operate on a host, and each
set can use only a half of CPU and memory resources of the system, so a processing
power of each set of relay/server is halved but this does not influence the effectiveness of
the entire system, both the message buffered due to the failure and the ongoing session
processing is reserved, and only a new message submitted during switching due to the
failure is lost. In this case, since the load balancer can balance loads of the respective
MMSC nodes, a sum of processing powers of the two sets of relays/servers of the entire
host can be substantially equivalent to that of a normal cluster node, that is, a system with
a number N of MMSC nodes loses 1/N of a processing power of the system upon failure
of a single point. In this embodiment, the system with four hosts loses 25% of the
processing power. In a practical application, the larger the N is, the lower the proportion
of loss will be.
Further, the relay in this embodiment of the present invention are components
implemented by software, and an initial memory is not allocated in a way with the
consistency of a maximum memory and a minimum memory but is scheduled
automatically by software so as to reduce a memory occupied during switching due to a
failure.
Three embodiments are described below respectively. The message distribution
device in the three embodiments is a load balancer. The method that the load balancer
determines an MMSC node to receive a multimedia messaging service request is
selecting an MMSC node whose load is minimum among all the MMSC nodes. The
method includes following three methods.
In one method, the load balancer sends detection information to the MMSC
nodes upon receiving a multimedia messaging service request, receives response
information from the respective MMSC nodes, and determines the most rapidly
responding node as the node with the minimum load.
In another method, upon receiving a new multimedia messaging service request,
the load balancer records the number of multimedia messaging service requests
processed by each MMSC node, and determines the node currently processing the
smallest number of multimedia messaging service requests as the node with the

minimum load.
In yet another method, load of each MMSC node resource group is calculated
according to CPU model numbers, the number of CPUs, a memory, and the number of
current connections of the MMSC node resource group, and the node with the minimum
load is determined as the node with the minimum load. A specific conversion process is
known in the prior art and descriptions thereof will be omitted here.
A relay and a server corresponding to the relay in the embodiments of the
present invention operate on the same host to constitute an independent MMSC node. A
message received by the relay can be delivered directly to the server corresponding to the
relay through a shared memory, and the server delivers a message for transmission
directly to the relay corresponding to the server through the shared memory.
The One Embodiment
Referring to Figure 4, Figure 4 is a flow chart of a method for implementing a
multimedia messaging service sent by a mobile terminal to another mobile terminal
according to the one embodiment of the present invention. The method includes the
following steps.
Steps 400 to 402: A sender sends an MM1 multimedia message submit request
(MMl_Submit.req) to the load balancer through the WAP gateway. The load balancer
sends the multimedia message to the relay of the minimum load. MMSC node, such as
the relay 1. The relay 1 performs MM2 encoding of the multimedia message and then
submits it to the server 1 on the present node through a shared memory.
In this step, before the sender sends the multimedia message to the load
balancer, a Transfer Control Protocol (TCP) connection is firstly established between the
sender, the gateway and load balancer, and a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
connection is established between the load balancer and the relay of the MMSC node.
Data transmission between the sender and the MMSC node is enabled through the two
connections. A specific process of establishing the connections is known in the prior art
and descriptions thereof will be omitted here.
Steps 403 to 405: The server 1 stores the multimedia message upon receiving
the multimedia message, performs processing such as format translation and the like, and
returns a response message to the relay 1 of the host. The server 1 also generates
identification information including node number information. The relay 1 performs
MM1 encoding of the received response message and then returns it to the load balancer
in the original HTTP connection. The load balancer performs an NAT operation on the IP

header of the response message and then sends it to the WAP gateway through the
established TCP connection, and in turn the WAP gateway relays the message to the
sender according to a sender address in the response message.
Step 406: The server 1 constructs a MM2 notification message
(MM2_Notification.ind) and delivers it to the relay 1 on the present node.
The notification message includes the identification information generated by
the MMSC node 1, where the identification information includes the node number
information of the present node, and address information of a receiver. A URL of the
notification message carries the port number of the server of the node, such as 8001, and
an IP address of the URL is a outward-mapped public IP address of the multimedia
messaging service system.
Steps 407 to 408: The relay 1 performs MM1 encoding of the notification
message and then sends it to the load balancer. The load balancer performs an SNAT
operation on the notification message and then sends it to the WAP gateway according to
the receiver address in the notification message. The WAP gateway relays the message to
the receiver.
Step 409: The receiver responds with an MM1 notification response message
(MMl_NotifyResp.ind) upon receiving the notification message.
The notification response message carries the identification information of the
notification message. A response address is an information server address set by a mobile
terminal, that is, an SNAT operated source IP address, and thus points to the load
balancer.
Step 410: The load balancer determines the MMSC node with the minimum
load upon receiving the notification response message, and sends the notification
response message to the relay of the MMSC node with the minimum load, such as the
relay 2 of the MMSC node 2.
Step 411: The relay 2 performs MM2 encoding upon receiving the notification
response message while recognizing the identification information of the notification
response message, and relays the notification response message to the server of the
MMSC node corresponding to the MMSC node number information of the identification
information.
In this step, the server receiving the notification response message is a server
processing the present session. The server receiving the notification response message is
server 1 in this embodiment.

Step 412: The WAP gateway sends an MM1 message retrieval request
(MMlRetrieve.req) message of the sender to the load balancer.
The request message includes a message identifier of the multimedia message,
and URL of the multimedia message includes the port number of the server processing
the multimedia message to be downloaded, such as 8001 in this embodiment.
Steps 413 to 414: The load balancer distributes the message retrieval request to
the relay on the MMSC node processing the present transaction, according to the port
number in the URL of the request message. The relay is relay 1 in this embodiment. The
relay 1 performs MM2 encoding of the request message and sends it to the server 1 of the
MMSC node through the shared memory.
Steps 415 to 417: The server 1 searches in all multimedia messages stored on
itself the corresponding multimedia message according to the message identifier in the
request message, and returns the corresponding multimedia message to the relay 1
through the shared memory. The relay 1 performs MM1 encoding of the multimedia
message and then sends it to the load balancer in the original HTTP connection. The load
balancer performs an NAT operation on the IP header of the multimedia message and
then sends it to the gateway through the reserved TCP connection. The WAP gateway
relays the multimedia message to the receiver.
Steps 418 to 420: The receiver sends an MM1 success
message(MMl_acknowledge.ind) carrying the transaction identification information to
its information server, i.e., the load balancer, upon receiving the multimedia message.
The load balancer relays the success message to the relay of the MMSC node with the
minimum load, such as the relay 2. The relay 2 performs MM2 encoding upon receiving
the success message while recognizing the identification information in the message, and
relays the success message to the server, a server processing the present session, of the
MMSC node corresponding to the MMSC node number information of the identification
information. The server processing the present session is server 1 in this embodiment.
The server 1 upon receiving the success message deletes the stored multimedia message
and releases the resources, thereby terminating present transaction processing.
In the above steps, the steps 400 to 405 constitute a process in which the sender
submits the multimedia message and receives the response message with which the
server responds, and the steps 406 to 411 constitute a process in which the server sends
the notification message to the receiver and receives the notification response message;
and the steps 412 to 420 constitute a process in which the receiver receives the
multimedia message and sends the success message.

The Another Embodiment
Referring to Figure 5, Figure 5 is a flow chart of a method for implementing a
multimedia messaging service sent by a mobile terminal to an SP according to the
another embodiment of the present invention and the method includes the following
steps.
The steps 500 to 505 constitute a process in which a mobile terminal of the
sender submits a multimedia message and receives a response from an MMSC node, and
are the same as the steps 400 to 405 in the embodiment as illustrated in Figure 4.
Steps 506 to 508: The server 1 constructs an MM2 multimedia message
delivery request message (MM2_Delivery.req), and the relay 1 of the node encodes it
into an MM7 multimedia message delivery request message (MM7_Delivery.req) and
then sends it to the load balancer. The load balancer performs an SNAT operation on the
request message and then sends it to a corresponding SP according to address
information of a receiver in the request message, i.e., an IP address of the SP.
Steps 509 to 510: The SP sends an MM7 response message (MM7_Delivery.res)
to the load balancer. The load balancer relays the response message to the relay of the
MMSC node processing the present session, according to the stored session information.
The relay of the MMSC node processing the present session is relay 1 in this
embodiment.
Since the MM7_Delivery.req/res are in a socket session, the load balancer
deliver the MM7_Delivery.res to the node processing the present transaction according
to the stored session information.
Step 511: The relay 1 receives and performs MM2 encoding of the response
message and sends it to the sever 1. The server 1 upon receiving the response message
deletes the stored multimedia message and releases the resources, thereby terminating
present transaction processing.
The steps 506 to 511 in this embodiment constitute a process in which the
server of the MMSC node delivers the multimedia message to the SP and receives a
response message from the SP.
If the SP is replaced with a mail server, then the steps 506 to 508 are as follows.
The server 1 constructs an MM2 multimedia message sending request message
(MMSMTPSend), and the relay 1 of the node performs MM3 encoding and then sends
it to the load balancer. The load balancer performs an SNAT operation of the request
message and then sends it to the corresponding mail server according to the address

information of the receiver, i.e., the IP address of the mail server. The steps 509 to 511
may be omitted.
The Yet Another Embodiment
Referring to Figure 6, Figure .6 is a flow chart of a method for implementing a
multimedia messaging service from an SP to a mobile terminal according to the yet
another embodiment of the present invention and the method includes the following
steps.
Steps 600 to 602: An SP submits an MM7 multimedia message submit request
(MM7_Submit.req) message to the load balancer. The load balancer determines the
MMSC node with the minimum load and sends the request message to relay of the
MMSC node with the minimum load, such as the relay 1. The relay 1 performs MM2
encoding of the request message and then submits it to the server 1 through a shared
memory.
Steps 603 to 605: The server 1 processes the request message and returns an
MM2 response message (MM2_Submit.res). The relay 1 receives the response message,
performs MM7 encoding and returns it to the load balancer in the original HTTP
connection; and the load balancer performs an NAT operation on the IP header of the
response message and then sends it to the SP through the reserved TCP connection.
The steps 606 to 620 may be the same as the steps 406 to 420.
In this embodiment, the steps 600 to 605 constitute a process in which the SP
submits the multimedia message and receives the response message, the steps 606 to 611
sends for the server the notification message to the receiver and receives the response
message with which it responds, and the steps 612 to 620 constitute a process in which
the receiver retrieves the multimedia message and sends the success message.
If the SP is replaced with a mail server, then step 800 is that the mail server
submits an MM3 multimedia message submit request (MM3_SMTP.Send) to the load
balancer, and the steps 603 to 605 may be omitted while the other steps remain the same.
When a sender and a receiver of a multimedia message are not in the same
network, an MMSC node to which the sender belongs forwards the received multimedia
message to an MMSC node to which the receiver belongs for processing. A flow chart of
the method at this time is as illustrated in Figure 7. Referring to Figure 7, the method
includes the following steps.
Steps 700 to 702: The server 1 of the MMSC node receiving a multimedia
messaging service request constructs contents of a multimedia message to be relayed and

control information into an MM2 forward request message (MM2_Forward.req). The
control information includes identification information and an address of a receiver. The
relay 1 encodes it into an MM4 forward request message (MM4_Forward.req) and then
sends it to the load balancer. The load balancer performs an SNAT operation of the
forward request message and then sends it to an MMSC node to which the receiver
belongs.
Steps 703 to 705: The MMSC node to which the receiver belongs sends an
MM4 forward response message (MM4_Forward.res) to the load balancer upon
receiving the forward request message. The load balancer sends the response message to
the relay of the MMSC node with the minimum load, such as the relay 2. In turn the relay
2 parses the identification information of the response message and routes the response
message to a server processing the session, the server 1 in this embodiment.
Steps 706 to 708: The MMSC node receiving the forward request message
sends an MM4 report message of multimedia message relaying success
(MM4_DeliveryReport.rep) to the load balancer upon successful issuing of the
multimedia message. The load balancer relays it to the relay with the minimum load,
such as the relay 2. The relay 2 parses the identification information in the report
message and routes the report message to a server processing the session, the server 1 in
this embodiment.
Steps 709 to 711: The server 1 sends an MM4 report response message
(MM4_Deliver.res) to the load balancer through the relay 1 on the node. The load
balancer performs an SNAT operations of the response message and then sends it to the
MMSC node receiving the forward request message to which the receiver belongs,
thereby terminating present transaction processing.
In this embodiment, the steps 700 to 705 constitute a process in which the
MMSC node receiving the multimedia messaging service request sends the MM4
forward request message and receives the forward response message, and the steps 706
to 711 constitute a process in which the MMSC node to which the receiver belongs sends
the MM4 report message of multimedia message relaying success upon successful
relaying of the multimedia message and receives the report response message.
When an MMSC node to which the sender belongs sends the forward request,
an MMSC node receiving the forward request message in the receiving network
proceeds with an inward forward flow. It is assumed that the receiver is a mobile terminal,
and Figure8 illustrates a flow chart of a method for inward MM4 forward. Referring to
Figure 8, the method includes the following steps.

Steps 800 to 802: An MMSC node to which the sender belongs submits an
MM4 forward request message (MM4_Forward.req) to the load balancer. The load
balancer sends the request message to the relay of the node with the minimum load in the
receiving network, such as the relay 2. The relay 2 distributes it to the server 1 according
to a message identifier in the request message.
It is required in this step that multimedia messages with the same message
identifier shall be distributed to the same server.
Steps 803 to 805: The server 1 constructs an MM2 forward request response
message (MM2_Forward.res) upon receiving the request message, and the relay 1 on the
node encodes it into an MM4 forward request response message (MM4_Forward.res)
and then sends the message to the load balancer. The server 1 records the old message
identifier and transaction identifier and generates a new message identifier and
transaction identifier. The load balancer receives the forward request response message
sent from the relay and then performs an SNAT operation on the response message and
relays it to the MMSC node sending the forward request message in the sending network.
Step 806: The server 1 constructs an MM2 notification message
(MM2_Notification.ind) to be sent to a mobile terminal of the receiver with the new
message identifier and transaction identifier and sends the message to the relay 1 on the
node.
In this step, a URL in the notification message includes the port number of the
server processing the transaction, such as 8001.
The steps 807 to 820 are the same as the steps 407 to 420 in the flow of the
method for implementing a multimedia messaging service method from a mobile
terminal to a mobile terminal according to the first embodiment of Figure 4 and
descriptions thereof will be omitted here.
Steps 821 to 823: The server 1 generates an MM2 report message of multimedia
message relaying success (MM2_DeliveryReport.req) including information on the old
message identifier and the new transaction identifier. The relay 1 of the node encodes it
into an MM4 report message of multimedia message relaying success
(MM4_DeliveryReport.req) and then sends it to the load balancer. The load balancer
performs an SNAT operation on the report message and then sends it to the MMSC node
sending the forward request message in the sending network according to the
information on the old message identifier.
Steps 824 to 825: The MMSC node sending the forward request message in the

sending network returns an MM4 report response message (MM4_DeliveryReport.res)
to the load balancer upon receiving the report message of multimedia message relaying
success; and the load balancer sends the response message to the relay of the MMSC
node with the minimum load, such as the relay 2.
Step 826: The relay routes the message to the server 1 processing the session
according to the identification information in the response message.
In this embodiment, the steps 800 to 805 constitute a process in which the MM4
forward request message is received and the MM4 forward response is sent, the steps
806 to 811 constitute a process in which the notification message is sent to the mobile
terminal and a process in which the notification response message is received from the
mobile terminal, the steps 812 to 820 constitute a process in which the mobile terminal
retrieves the multimedia message and sends the success message, and the steps 821 to
826 constitute a process in which an MMSC node to which the receiver belongs sends
the report message of multimedia message relaying success upon successful relaying of
the multimedia message and receives the report response message.
The WAP gateway in the present invention can also be an IP gateway.
In a practical application, the number of MMSC nodes in the system can be set
as required for a service, less or more than four.
Figure 9 is a diagram of a structure of an MMSC node according to an
embodiment of the present invention. As illustrated in Figure 9, the node includes a relay,
a server corresponding uniquely to the relay and a shared memory.
Particularly, the relay is adapted to receive a multimedia message sent from a
message distribution device and relay the multimedia message to the server through the
shared memory. The server is adapted to store the multimedia message sent from the
relay and send it to the relay through the shared memory. The multimedia message is
delivered to a receiver through the relay and the message distribution device. The relay is
adapted to transfer the multimedia message between the relay and the corresponding
server.
Specifically, the server includes a storage module adapted to store the
multimedia message sent from the relay through the shared memory; an identification
information generation module adapted to generate identification information including
an information identifier and a transaction identifier upon receiving the multimedia
message; and an issuing module adapted to deliver the multimedia message stored in the
storage module to the receiver of a multimedia messaging service through the shared

memory and the relay according to the identification information.
The server further includes a determination module and a forward request
generation module. Particularly, the determination module is adapted to determine
whether address information of the receiver in the multimedia message belongs to the
MMSC node; if yes, the issuing module delivers the multimedia message; otherwise, the
forward request generation module generates a forward request message and sends it to
the message distribution device through the shared memory and the relay.
As can be seen from above, the method, system and device for implementing a
large capacity multimedia messaging service provided according to the embodiments of
the present invention propose a peer cluster solution for a horizontal capacity extension
of a large capacity multimedia messaging service and have the following advantages.
Firstly, the relay and the server are integrated to constitute an independent
MMSC node, so that processing of contents of the same multimedia message is
accomplished on the same node in the system, thereby reducing cross accesses between
nodes, improving the efficiency of transferring the message and hence increasing the
processing power of the multimedia messaging service system. Further, all MMSC nodes
are numbered uniformly and number information is made correspond to the port number
of the server, so that the message distribution device can send a message retrieval request
directly to the MMSC node processing the session, and the relay can deliver the
multimedia message directly to the corresponding server, thereby improving the
efficiency of transferring the message, reducing greatly the demand for a transmission
speed of network devices and increasing the processing power of the multimedia
messaging service system.
Secondly, each MMSC node can enable independently I/O reading and writing
of a multimedia message, thereby optimizing the storage architecture of the multimedia
message and avoiding the problem of limited service processing of the multimedia
messaging service system due to centralized reading and writing of the multimedia
messages. Further, the respective MMSC nodes in the peer cluster perform the
multimedia messaging service concurrently, thereby improving the processing speed of
the multimedia messages and hence increasing the processing power of the multimedia
messaging service system.
Thirdly, as new demands for the multimedia messaging service constantly
emerge, a proportion of the demand for a processing power required for the relay and the
server will vary dynamically, and the relay and the server are integrated on a host to
constitute an independent node in the embodiments of the present invention, thereby

achieving an online smooth extension of the system; and each MMSC node can adjust
dynamically CPU and memory resources occupied for a relay and a server according to a
practical consumption so as to be adapted to the varying service demand, thereby
avoiding a waste of the resources.
Fourthly, the load balancer determines an MMSC node to receive a service
request according to a load condition of a relay and a server corresponding to the relay
instead of allocating a service by number segments, and makes identification information
generated by the server correspond to number information of the MMSC node, so that
the relay can relay a message to the server processing the present service request, which
corresponds to the node number information, according to the identification information,
thereby achieving indeed a load balancer among the MMSC nodes.
Fifthly, the inventive system is structured simply, and the respective MMSC
nodes can be configured with the same system software and thus can be maintained and
managed equally thereby improving maintainability of the system.

WE CLAIM:
1. A method for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system,
comprising the steps of:
determining, by a message distribution device upon receiving a multimedia
message sent from a sender, a first Multimedia Messaging Service Center MMSC node
to receive the multimedia message, and relaying the multimedia message to a relay of the
first MMSC node;
delivering, by the relay of the first MMSC node, the multimedia message to a
server of the first MMSC node for storage, wherein the server of the first MMSC node is
one-to-one corresponding to the relay of the first MMSC node; and
sending, by the server of the first MMSC node, the multimedia message to a
receiver through the relay of the first MMSC node and the message distribution device.
2. The method according to claim 1, after the server of the first MMSC node stores
the multimedia message, the method further comprises:
generating, by the server of the first MMSC node, first identification information
comprising a first message identifier and a first transaction identifier, wherein the first
transaction identifier comprises number information of the first MMSC node.
3. The method according to claim 2, wherein the address information of the
receiver in the multimedia message is in the network of the first MMSC node, the
sending by the server of the first MMSC node of the multimedia message to the receiver
through the relay of the first MMSC node and the message distribution device comprises:
generating, by the server of the first MMSC node, a notification message
comprising the first identification information and a Uniform Resource Locator URL;
sending the notification message to the receiver through the relay of the first
MMSC node and the load balancer; and
retrieving, by the receiver, the multimedia message from the server according to
the first identification information and the URL in the notification message.
4. The method according to claim 2, after the notification message is sent to the
receiver, the method further comprises:
returning, by the receiver, a notification response message comprising the first

identification information to the load balancer;
determining, by the load balancer, an MMSC node to receive the notification
response message according to load conditions of the respective MMSC nodes and
relaying it to the MMSC node receiving the notification response message; and
relaying, by a relay of the MMSC node receiving the notification response
message, the notification response message to the server of the first MMSC node
according to the first identification information in the notification response message.
5. The method according to claim 4, wherein the URL of the notification message
carries a port number of the server corresponding to the number information of the first
MMSC node;
the retrieving by the receiver of the multimedia message from the server according
to the first identification information and the URL in the notification message comprises:
sending, by the receiver, a message retrieval request carrying the port number to
the load balancer;
sending, by the load balancer, the message retrieval request to the relay of the first
MMSC node according to the port number;
delivering, by the relay of the first MMSC node, the message retrieval request to
the server of the first MMSC node; and
sending, by the server of the first MMSC node upon receiving the message
retrieval request, the multimedia message to the receiver through the relay of the first
MMSC node and the load balancer.
6. The method according to claim 2, wherein the address information of the
receiver in the multimedia message is not in the network of the first MMSC node, the
sending by the server of the multimedia message to the receiver through the relay of the
first MMSC node and the message distribution device comprises:
sending, by the server of the first MMSC node, a forward request message
comprising the multimedia message to the load balancer through the relay of the first
MMSC node;
relaying, by the load balancer, the forward request message to an MMSC node to
which the receiver belongs; and
sending, by a second MMSC node which is an MMSC node receiving the
multimedia message in a network of the receiver, the multimedia message to the receiver;
and

wherein the multimedia message carries the first identification information.
7. The method according to claim 6, wherein after the second MMSC node
receives the forward request message, the server of the second MMSC node stores the
first identification information carried in the multimedia message and generates second
identification information comprising a second message identifier and a second
transaction identifier.
8. The method according to claim 7, wherein the second MMSC node sends the
multimedia message to the receiver according to the second identification information;
after the second MMSC node sends the multimedia message to the receiver, the method
further comprises:
generating, by the server of the second MMSC node, a report message of
multimedia message relaying success comprising the first identification information.
9. A Multimedia Messaging Service Center MMSC node, comprising a relay, a
server one-to-one corresponding to the relay and a shared memory, wherein:
the relay is adapted to receive a multimedia message sent from a message
distribution device and relay the multimedia message to the server through the shared
memory;
the server is adapted to store the multimedia message sent from the relay and send
the multimedia message to the relay through the shared memory, which is delivered to a
receiver through the relay and the message distribution device; and
the shared memory is adapted to transfer the message between the relay and the
corresponding server.
10. The MMSC node according to claim 9, wherein the server comprises:
a storage module, adapted to store the multimedia message sent from the relay
through the shared memory;
an identification information generation module, adapted to generate
identification information comprising an information identifier and a transaction
identifier upon receiving the multimedia message; and
an issuing module, adapted to deliver the multimedia message stored in the
storage module to the receiver of a multimedia messaging service through the shared
memory and the relay according to the identification information.
11. A system for increasing a capacity of a multimedia messaging service system,
comprising at least two MMSC nodes as any of claims 9-10 and a message distribution

device, wherein:
the message distribution device is adapted to receive the multimedia message,
determine an MMSC node to process the multimedia message, relay the multimedia
message to the relay of the MMSC node processing the multimedia message and receive
and relay a multimedia message sent from the relay.
12. The system according to claim 11, wherein the server is further adapted to
generate identification information comprising number information of the MMSC node.
13. The system according to claim 12, wherein the server is further adapted to
generate a notification message comprising the identification information and a URL,
and the URL comprises a port number of the server corresponding to the number
information of the MMSC node.
14. The system according to claim 13, wherein the message distribution device is
further adapted to receive a message retrieval request comprising the port number,
recognize the port number and relay the message retrieval request to the server
corresponding to the port number.
15. The system according to claim 12, wherein the relay is further adapted to
recognize the identification information of the message received from the message
distribution device and send the message to the server of the MMSC node corresponding
to the number information of the MMSC node in the identification information.
16. The system according to claim 11, wherein the message distribution device is
further adapted to store session information of the multimedia message, receive a
response message carrying the session information and relay the response message to the
relay of a corresponding MMSC node according to the session information.

A method for increasing multimedia messaging service system capacity is provided, it comprises: a message distributing device determining a first multimedia messaging service center (MMSC) node for receiving multimedia message, and forwarding the multimedia message to a relay of the first MMSC node, after it having received multimedia message; the multimedia message being transmitted to a server of the first MMSC node by the relay of the first MMSC node, and stored in the server of the
first MMSC node; the server of the first MMSC node corresponding to the relay of the
first MMSC relay uniquely; the server of the first MMSC node sending the multimedia
message to the receipt party via the relay of the first MMSC node and the message distributing device. A system and a device for increasing multimedia messaging service system capacity are provided, too. It can increase the capacity of multimedia messaging service system handling multimedia message service with the invention.

Documents:

http://ipindiaonline.gov.in/patentsearch/GrantedSearch/viewdoc.aspx?id=q9VvzBt568m+y0bDYYpCzQ==&loc=wDBSZCsAt7zoiVrqcFJsRw==

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Patent Number

269162

Indian Patent Application Number

2200/KOLNP/2009

PG Journal Number

41/2015

Publication Date

09-Oct-2015

Grant Date

06-Oct-2015

Date of Filing

12-Jun-2009

Name of Patentee

HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD.

Applicant Address

HUAWEI ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, BANTIAN, LONGGANG DISTRICT, SHENZHEN, GUANGDONG 518129

Inventors:

#	Inventor's Name	Inventor's Address
1	LI, DAWEI	HUAWEI ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, BANTIAN, LONGGANG DISTRICT, SHENZHEN, GUANGDONG 518129
2	ZHANG, ZHIYUAN	HUAWEI ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, BANTIAN, LONGGANG DISTRICT, SHENZHEN, GUANGDONG 518129
3	WANG, YANG	HUAWEI ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, BANTIAN, LONGGANG DISTRICT, SHENZHEN, GUANGDONG 518129
4	BAI, GUANGCHANG	HUAWEI ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, BANTIAN, LONGGANG DISTRICT, SHENZHEN, GUANGDONG 518129
5	CHENG, WEIMING	HUAWEI ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, BANTIAN, LONGGANG DISTRICT, SHENZHEN, GUANGDONG 518129

PCT International Classification Number

H04Q 7/22

PCT International Application Number

PCT/CN2007/070613

PCT International Filing date

2007-09-03

PCT Conventions:

#	PCT Application Number	Date of Convention	Priority Country
1	200610160851.8	2006-11-30	China