CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This application is the U.S. national phase of PCT Application No. PCT/CN2017/102178 filed on Sep. 19, 2017, which claims a priority to Chinese Patent Application No. 201610855578.4 filed on Sep. 27, 2016, the disclosure of which is incorporated in its entirety by reference herein.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates to the field of data communication technologies, in particular to a control method for data transmission and a terminal.

BACKGROUND

In data communication, an Application specific Congestion control for Data Communication (ACDC) is an access control mechanism for operators to permit or prohibit an access request from particular applications in User Equipment (UE) when the UE is in idle mode. The ACDC applies only to UEs in idle mode instead of UEs in connected mode. The ACDC is used for alleviating overload of an access network or a core network, and has the following basic characteristics.

1. The ACDC shall be applicable to Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) Terrestrial Radio Access Network (URAN) (UTRAN for short) and Evolved UTRAN (E-UTRAN).

2. The home network shall be able to configure a UE with at least four ACDC categories, each of which is associated with an operator-identified application.

3. Configuring the ACDC categories in the UE is the obligation of the home network, and the categorization how to configure the ACDC categories is outside the scope of 3GPP.

4. A mechanism shall be provided that enables the UE to verify that the ACDC categories are configured by a trusted source.

5. The serving network shall be able to broadcast, in an area of the access network, control information including: barring information for each ACDC category, and information about whether a roaming UE shall be subject to ACDC control.

6. The home network shall be able to configure a relationship between applications and the ACDC categories in the UE, since the barring information broadcast in each cell is different.

7. The UE shall be able to control whether or not an access request for a certain application is permitted to be transmitted, based on this broadcasted barring information and a configuration of the ACDC categories in the UE.

8. The serving network shall be able to simultaneously indicate the ACDC and other forms of access control. When the ACDC and an Access Class Barring (ACB) control are indicated simultaneously, the ACDC shall override the ACB.

9. In the case of multiple core networks sharing the same access network, the access network shall be able to apply the ACDC for the different core networks individually. For alleviating congestion in a shared access network, barring rates should be set equal for different operators for fairness.

Each application may be assigned with an application identifier (ID) by an operating system of the UE. The relationship between applications and ACDC categories may be acquired by receiving the broadcasting of the home network by the UE or by writing into a SIM card by the core network in a remote manner. Multiple applications may be associated with one ACDC category.

When configuring the UE with the ACDC categories of applications, the home network shall proceed as follows:

first, applications whose use is expected to be restricted the least shall be assigned with the highest ranked ACDC category, ACDC #1;

second, applications whose use is expected to be restricted more than ACDC #1 applications shall be assigned with the second-to-highest ranked ACDC category, and so on; and third, applications whose use is expected to be restricted the most strictly shall either be assigned the lowest ranked ACDC category, or not be categorized at all.

The applications on the UE that are not assigned with any ACDC category shall be treated by the UE as part of the lowest ACDC category. When applying ACDC, the serving network broadcasts barring information starting from the highest to the lowest ACDC category. The home network and the serving network may use different categorisation manners. The serving network decides if ACDC applies to roaming UEs.

The number of ACDC categories in the UE may not be the same as the number of ACDC categories broadcast by the serving network. This may happen, e.g. when the UE is roaming and the number of ACDC categories broadcast by the serving network is different from the number of ACDC categories configured by the home network. Therefore, the following rules shall apply in this case:

first, if the serving network broadcasts more ACDC categories than the UE's configuration, the UE shall use barring information for the matching ACDC categories, and shall bar uncategorised applications using the barring information for the lowest category broadcast by the serving network, and shall ignore barring information for unmatched categories; and

second, if the serving network broadcasts barring information for fewer ACDC categories than the UE's configuration, the UE shall use barring information for the matching ACDC categories and shall bar other applications using the barring information for the lowest category broadcast by the serving network.

Here, the matching ACDC category is an ACDC category for which barring information is broadcast by the serving network and that has the same rank as the ACDC category configured in the UE.

During the ACDC access control procedure in the serving network, barring parameters for different ACDC categories are broadcast sequentially by the serving network, and the barring parameter includes barring time and a barring rate.

Barring time: given that the broadcast barring time for ACDC #1 is 100 ms, for the application a in ACDC category #1, once an access request from the application a is barred by an ACDC policy, the access request from the application a may be barred for 100 ms.

Barring rate: given that the broadcast barring rate for ACDC #2 is 0.6, for the application b in ACDC category #2, the UE generates a random number between 0 and 1 when a connection request is initiated by the application b; the access request is permitted in a case that the random number is less than or equal to 0.6; and the access request is prohibited in a case that the random number is greater than 0.6.

For the conventional ACDC, a service request (SR) including the ACDC category, may be transmitted from a Non Access Stratum (NAS) layer to a lower layer, i.e. Radio Resource Control (RRC) layer before the UE in idle mode initiates a random access procedure. The barring parameters are derived in the RRC layer, and ACDC decision is conducted in the RRC layer.

However, since a user-plane bearer has been established when a UE is in connected mode, the UE may transmit data directly in the application layer, rather than the SR request being transmitted from the NAS layer to the RRC layer. Therefore, new services initiated in connected mode would not experience ACDC.

Since the conventional ACDC applies only to UEs in idle mode instead of UEs in connected mode, it may lead to a free-rider issue: because that admission decision could be made only in idle mode in ACDC, when an application is allowed to access to the network, a RRC connection to the network could be established. No more ACDC decision would be made for the other applications having the lower priorities than the application before the RRC connection is disconnected, and those applications having the lower priorities may bypass the ACDC decision and may directly access the network. It's obvious that the ACDC in related art is not conducive to control and managing different applications individually, and fairness of priorities among the applications.

SUMMARY

The technical problem to be solved by embodiments of the present disclosure is to provide a control method for data transmission and a terminal, for performing access control for applications in a terminal in connected mode, to achieve fairer application priority management and network congestion control.

In order to solve the above mentioned problem, the embodiments of the present disclosure provide a control method for data transmission, including:

determining, when a terminal has established a user-plane bearer link with a network and before transmitting data to be transmitted, whether or not a destination address of the data to be transmitted is recorded in a pre-created address whitelist;

acquiring, if the destination address of the data to be transmitted is not recorded in the address whitelist, an application identifier corresponding to the data to be transmitted, and conducting access control decision based on the application identifier to obtain a decision result; and

transmitting, when the decision result indicates that transmission of the data to be transmitted is permitted, the data to be transmitted through the user-plane bearer link.

The embodiments of the present disclosure further provide a terminal, including:

a data filter unit, configured to determine, when the terminal has established a user-plane bearer link with a network and before transmitting data to be transmitted, whether or not a destination address of the data to be transmitted is recorded in a pre-created address whitelist;

an access decision unit, configured to acquire, if the destination address of the data to be transmitted is not recorded in the address whitelist, an application identifier corresponding to the data to be transmitted and conduct access control decision based on the application identifier to obtain a decision result; and

a transmitting unit, configured to transmit, when the decision result indicates that transmission of the data to be transmitted is permitted, the data to be transmitted through the user-plane bearer link.

The embodiments of the present disclosure further provide a terminal, including a processor, a storage and a transmitter, where:

by calling and executing program or data stored in the storage, the processor is configured to: determine, when the terminal has established a user-plane bearer link with a network and before transmitting data to be transmitted, whether or not a destination address of the data to be transmitted is recorded in a pre-created address; acquire, if the destination address of the data to be transmitted is not recorded in an address whitelist, an application identifier corresponding to the data to be transmitted, and conduct access control decision based on the application identifier to obtain a decision result; and

the transmitter is configured to transmit, when the decision result obtained by the processor indicates that transmission of the data to be transmitted is permitted, the data to be transmitted through the user-plane bearer link.

The embodiments of the present disclosure further provide a computer readable storage medium, storing instructions for executing the following steps:

determining, when a terminal has established a user-plane bearer link with a network and before transmitting data to be transmitted, whether or not a destination address of the data to be transmitted is recorded in a pre-created address whitelist;

acquiring, if the destination address of the data to be transmitted is not recorded in the address whitelist, an application identifier corresponding to the data to be transmitted, and conducting access control decision based on the application identifier to obtain a decision result; and

transmitting, when the decision result indicates that transmission of the data to be transmitted is permitted, the data to be transmitted through the user-plane bearer link.

Compared with the related art, the control method for data transmission and the terminal provided by the embodiments of the present disclosure can be used to conduct access control for applications in the UE in connected mode, thereby achieving fairer application priority management and network congestion control, and avoiding a problem that a lower priority application may bypass the ACDC decision and directly access to the network, after a RRC connection is established.

