Appeal No. 2000-1250
Application No. 08/662,077 Page 7
16, and 24-26). Added features such as call waiting, etc.
require additional software (col. 1, lines 33-38). As
telecommunications services have become more sophisticated over
the years due to the growth of cellular phone services, ISDN
lines, etc., the functionality of the system has increased, along
with the need for discrete switches separately programmed for
each type of service to be rendered. One approach to solving
this problem was to provide the desired functionality by adding
software blocks within the control modules of the switch. The
problem of this approach is that while hardware costs were saved,
the interaction of the different software blocks became complex,
such that the addition of a new function may adversely affect or
even disable the performance of an existing function. As a
result, adding new functionality has increased the development
time of the software to the point that the new functions are
virtually outdated before they can be implemented in the switch
(col. 1, line 59 through col. 2, line 38). Ramstrom’s solution
is to add application modules e.g., 122 and 123 (see figures 33
and 34), which access resource modules having logical switch
objects 145a-145e. The logical switch objects, along with the
switch hardware 156, are coordinated through resource modules
145, 146, etc. (figure 34, and col. 39, lines 23-59).
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Last modified: November 3, 2007