The Impact of the Internet on Telecommunication Architectures

The ever-growing popularity of the Internet is dramatically changing the landscape of the communications market place. The two separate worlds of the Internet and Telecommunications are converging. The respective advantages of the two environments are being integrated to fulfill the promise of the information super-highways. In this paper, we examine the impact of the Internet on the main telecommunication architectures, namely the IN, the TMN and TINA. There are two new tendencies for implementing telephony services in combination with the Internet: running part of the control sys tem over the Internet, or conveying both the user data and the control information over the Internet. We examine these two trends, and elaborate on possible ways of salvaging the best parts of the work achieved by the TINA-Consortium in the Internet context

Concurrent cell rate simulation of ATM telecommunications network.

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A Generic Network and System Management Framework

Networks and distributed systems have formed the basis of an ongoing communications revolution that has led to the genesis of a wide variety of services. The constantly increasing size and complexity of these systems does not come without problems. In some organisations, the deployment of Information Technology has reached a state where the benefits from downsizing and rightsizing by adding new services are undermined by the effort required to keep the system running. Management of networks and distributed systems in general has a straightforward goal: to provide a productive environment in which work can be performed effectively. The work required for management should be a small fraction of the total effort. Most IT systems are still managed in an ad hoc style without any carefully elaborated plan. In such an environment the success of management decisions depends totally on the qualification and knowledge of the administrator. The thesis provides an analysis of the state of the art in the area of Network and System Management and identifies the key requirements that must be addressed for the provisioning of Integrated Management Services. These include the integration of the different management related aspects (i.e. integration of heterogeneous Network, System and Service Management). The thesis then proposes a new framework, INSMware, for the provision of Management Services. It provides a fundamental basis for the realisation of a new approach to Network and System Management. It is argued that Management Systems can be derived from a set of pre-fabricated and reusable Building Blocks that break up the required functionality into a number of separate entities rather than being developed from scratch. It proposes a high-level logical model in order to accommodate the range of requirements and environments applicable to Integrated Network and System Management that can be used as a reference model. A development methodology is introduced that reflects principles of the proposed approach, and provides guidelines to structure the analysis, design and implementation phases of a management system. The INSMware approach can further be combined with the componentware paradigm for the implementation of the management system. Based on these principles, a prototype for the management of SNMP systems has been implemented using industry standard middleware technologies. It is argued that development of a management system based on Componentware principles can offer a number of benefits. INSMware Components may be re-used and system solutions will become more modular and thereby easier to construct and maintain

Redes de telecomunicações móveis em Portugal: análise retrospectiva

Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e TelemáticaPortugal é um dos países da União Europeia (UE) com maior taxa de penetração do Serviço Telefónico Móvel (STM) o que o torna num dos países mais interessantes para estudos relacionados com redes e serviços M´oveis. Neste contexto os estudos de mercado para determinar a taxa de penetração de um novo serviço / tecnologia tornam-se decisivos para as empresas uma vez que podem implicar custos elevados por vezes muito difíceis de rentabilizar. Apesar de já existir algum software que permite fazer modelação do comportamento de vários operadores de telecomunicações em determinados cenários, esses modelos têm em consideração padrões de comportamento teóricos e podem não estar inteiramente adaptados à realidade de cada mercado. Este trabalho procura melhorar esses padrões de comportamento fazendo uma análise retrospectiva ao mercado do STM desde a sua introdução em Portugal, em 1989, e assim fornecer dados mais precisos às ferramentas de modelação.Portugal is one of the European Union (EU) countries with the highest penetration rate of Mobile Telecommunications Service (MTS) and that fact makes it one of the most interesting countries for conducting studies related to mobile networks and services. In this context, doing market research to determine the penetration rate of a particular new service / technology becomes crucial for companies, since it may involve high costs sometimes very difficult to monetize. Although there is already some software that models the behavior of several telecom operators in certain scenarios, these models take into account patterns of behavior based only on theory which may not be fully adapted to each market reality. This work seeks to improve those patterns of behavior by a making a retrospective market analysis of the MTS, since its introduction in Portugal in 1989 thus providing more accurate data for modeling tools

Operational support systems for satellite communications

The role of satellite communications is changing from providing bandwidth linking network operators interconnections towards providing IP enabled communications to end users. This migration from few high-value routes towards many low-value routes means that integration and automation of processes with terrestrial networks becomes critical in driving down unit costs. Integration and automation is necessary on all planes: user, control and management. In satellite communications, management aspects, underpinned by Operational Support Systems (OSS) have received the least research attention, making this a valuable topic for study. In most areas, OSS for satellite systems are similar to other domains. However there are some notable areas of difference which have been the focus of this research. The eTOM business framework, developed by the TMF, has been used to highlight aspects of OSS unique to satellite. Since satellite capacity represents the highest operational cost of a satellite route, effective management while minimising the overhead traffic is critical. The transmission of IP packets is assumed and the real-time measurement of QoS parameters such as packet delay and loss emerged as the most important differences. A number of approaches to QoS measurement are feasible, however the use of trace packets is most promising especially for high network loads. An experiment compares the results from simulations, mathematical models and from a test network, using Poisson and self-similar traffic flows. The relationship between measurement accuracy and trace packet intensity is explored and the measurement response time to steps in traffic load is estimated. It is discovered that measurement accuracy improves as the queue load increases, in contrast to alternative approaches such as sampling of user packets. The response time to steps depends upon the degree of self-similarity and is generally longer than the times recommended by standards. A pragmatic approach to management of different modes is proposed where the measurement method is changed depending on the load