1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communication equipment configuration technique, and more particularly, to a method for automatically configuring terminal equipment.
2. Background of the Invention
The development of communication technology has been deeply affecting people's daily lives and social lives; especially the emergence of various broadband access techniques makes it convenient for more and more people in terms of work, life and entertainment.
At present, the conventional broadband access technique comprises: x Digital Subscriber Line (xDSL) access based on common telephone lines, Hybrid Fiber-Coaxial (HFC) access based on cable television coaxial cable and Local Area Network (LAN) access based on Ethernet technology. Besides, the broadband access technique based on Next Generation Network (NGN) is becoming more and more applicable. The common characteristic of the above-mentioned various broadband techniques is that a type of terminal equipment needs to be deployed at the user side so that devices like personal computers can be connected to the operator's network through the terminal equipment. For instance, in an Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Loop (ADSL) access mode, an ADSL Transmitting/receiving Unit for Remote end (ATU_R) needs to be installed at the user side; in the HFC access mode, a Cable Modem (CM) needs to be installed at the user side; in the NGN-based network, an Integrated Access Device (IAD) needs to be deployed at the user side.
Taking the ADSL access technique for example, a network application model of ADSL is shown in FIG. 1. A Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer (DSLAM) is set at a Central Office (CO) to provide a twisted-pair interface; and a terminal equipment ATU_R is set at the user side. The DSLAM and the ATU_R cooperate to implement the function of broadband access. Setting the terminal equipment at the user side is a step in the broadband access solution, which can implement specific functions. There are a great number of subscribers in the operator network, thus a great number of terminal equipment need to be set. Therefore, it is a great challenge for the operator to effectively maintain and manage such large number of terminal equipment that are extensively distributed.
At present, after setting the terminal equipment at the user side, the user terminal equipment needs to be configured before the broadband service is enabled. The configuration at the terminal equipment should be coordinated with the CO configuration, so that the service can be provided normally. The configuration at the terminal equipment usually comprises service information configuration, equipment information configuration and so on.
The current frequently used configuration measure is to manually configure the online terminal equipment through a terminal management unit. In other words, the manager of the terminal equipment inputs configuration information through a graphical or command line man-machine interaction interface; and then the terminal management unit directly transmits the inputted information to the terminal equipment to complete the configuration operation. The terminal management unit can be a network management system or an independent terminal management system. According to the measure of manually configuring the terminal equipment, the terminal equipment can be configured only when it is online. The term “online” refers to that the equipment is powered on and there is an available information channel between the equipment and the management tools. Because the terminal equipment is located at the user side, the terminal manager of the operator cannot control the terminal equipment to be online. It is sometimes impossible to complete configuring the terminal equipment through the manual online measure. Furthermore, it is of great workload, low efficiency and proneness to errors to configure the large number of user terminal equipment by using the manual online measure. Besides, it relies on whether the terminal equipment is correctly configured to enable the user service. Adopting manual online measure to configure the terminal equipment requires manual intervention, so it is unable to satisfy the requirement of the function of plug and play for the terminal equipment.
According to the solution of automatically configuring the terminal equipment in the prior art, the configuration information of the terminal equipment is stored in the server in the form of a file. On starting up, the terminal equipment automatically downloads the configuration file from the specified server to complete relevant configuration. According to the existing solution of automatic configuration, the terminal equipment needs to download the configuration file each time it is powered on, which leads to low efficiency. Furthermore the configuration file of all terminal equipment is the same, so individual configuration cannot be performed as demanded.