UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access): A New Approach towards Mobility

The purpose of this document is to describe the fixed-mobile convergence solution using Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) technology. This document describes elements for UMA access and convergence solution and the evolution towards the IP based network. UMA technology offers an alternative to the cellular radio access network (RAN), which uses the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and General Packet Radio Service/Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution (GPRS/EDGE) core circuit, data, and IMS services through IP-based broadband connections. To deliver a seamless user experience throughout these various access networks, the UMA specifications define a new network element, the UMA Network Controller (UNC), together with associated protocols for the secure transport of GSM and GPRS/EDGE, signalling, and bearer traffic over I

Prospects of peer-to-peer SIP for mobile operators

Tämän diplomityön tarkoituksena on esitellä kehitteillä oleva Peer-to-Peer Session Initiation Protocol (P2PSIP), jonka avulla käyttäjät voivat itsenäisesti ja helposti luoda keskenään puhe- ja muita multimediayhteyksiä vertaisverkko-tekniikan avulla. Lisäksi tarkoituksena on arvioida P2PSIP protokollan vaikutuksia ja mahdollisuuksia mobiilioperaattoreille, joille sitä voidaan pitää uhkana. Tästä huolimatta, P2PSIP:n ei ole kuitenkaan tarkoitus korvata nykyisiä puhelinverkkoja. Työn alussa esittelemme SIP:n ja vertaisverkkojen (Peer-to-Peer) periaatteet, joihin P2PSIP-protokollan on suunniteltu perustuvan. SIP mahdollistaa multimedia-istuntojen luomisen, sulkemisen ja muokkaamisen verkossa, mutta sen monipuolinen käyttö vaatii keskitettyjen palvelimien käyttöä. Vertaisverkon avulla käyttäjät voivat suorittaa keskitettyjen palvelimien tehtävät keskenään hajautetusti. Tällöin voidaan ylläpitää laajojakin verkkoja tehokkaasti ilman palvelimista aiheutuvia ylläpito-kustannuksia. Mobiilioperaattorit ovat haasteellisen tilanteen edessä, koska teleliikennemaailma on muuttumassa yhä avoimemmaksi. Tällöin operaattoreiden asiakkaille aukeaa mahdollisuuksia käyttää kilpailevia Internet-palveluja (kuten Skype) helpommin ja tulevaisuudessa myös itse muodostamaan kommunikointiverkkoja P2PSIP:n avulla. Tutkimukset osoittavat, että näistä uhista huolimatta myös operaattorit pystyvät näkemään P2PSIP:n mahdollisuutena mukautumisessa nopeasti muuttuvan teleliikennemaailman haasteisiin. Nämä mahdollisuudet sisältävät operaattorin oman verkon optimoinnin lisäksi vaihtoehtoisten ja monipuolisempien palveluiden tarjoamisen asiakkailleen edullisesti. Täytyy kuitenkin muistaa, että näiden mahdollisuuksien toteuttamisten vaikutusten ei tulisi olla ristiriidassa operaattorin muiden palveluiden kanssa. Lisäksi tulisi muistaa, että tällä hetkellä keskeneräisen P2PSIP-standardin lopullinen luonne ja ominaisuudet voivat muuttaa sen vaikutuksia.The purpose of this thesis is to present the Peer-to-Peer Session Initiation Protocol (P2PSIP) being developed. In addition, the purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the impacts and prospects of P2PSIP to mobile operators, to whom it can be regarded as a threat. In P2PSIP, users can independently and easily establish voice and other multimedia connections using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking. However, P2PSIP is not meant to replace the existing telephony networks of the operators. We start by introducing the principles of SIP and P2P networking that the P2PSIP is intended to use. SIP enables to establish, terminate and modify multimedia sessions, but its versatile exploitation requires using centralized servers. By using P2P networking, users can decentralize the functions of centralized servers by performing them among themselves. This enables to maintain large and robust networks without maintenance costs resulted of running such centralized servers. Telecommunications market is transforming to a more open environment, where mobile operators and other service providers are challenged to adapt to the upcoming changes. Subscribers have easier access to rivalling Internet-services (such as Skype) and in future they can form their own communication communities by using P2PSIP. The results show that despite of these threats, telecom operators can find potential from P2PSIP in concurrence in adaptation to the challenges of the rapidly changing telecom environment. These potential roles include optimization of the network of the operator, but as well roles to provide alternative and more versatile services to their subscribers at low cost. However, the usage of P2PSIP should not conflict with the other services of the operator. Also, as P2PSIP is still under development, its final nature and features may change its impacts and prospects

Service Management: From definition to information modeling

In this paper, we split the service management layer, as defined in the Telecommunication Management Network (TMN), into two sublayers, namely the service application management sublayer and the service network management sublayer. The former deals with managing the mapping of the non functional requirements into functional constraints over the telecommunication service of interest, while the second reveals the management details related to meeting the functional requirements over that service. At each sublayer, we propose an information model and emphasize the correspondence with the other sublayer

A Decentralized Session Management Framework for Heterogeneous Ad-Hoc and Fixed Networks

Wireless technologies are continuously evolving. Second generation cellular networks have gained worldwide acceptance. Wireless LANs are commonly deployed in corporations or university campuses, and their diffusion in public hotspots is growing. Third generation cellular systems are yet to affirm everywhere; still, there is an impressive amount of research ongoing for deploying beyond 3G systems. These new wireless technologies combine the characteristics of WLAN based and cellular networks to provide increased bandwidth. The common direction where all the efforts in wireless technologies are headed is towards an IP-based communication. Telephony services have been the killer application for cellular systems; their evolution to packet-switched networks is a natural path. Effective IP telephony signaling protocols, such as the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the H 323 protocol are needed to establish IP-based telephony sessions. However, IP telephony is just one service example of IP-based communication. IP-based multimedia sessions are expected to become popular and offer a wider range of communication capabilities than pure telephony. In order to conjoin the advances of the future wireless technologies with the potential of IP-based multimedia communication, the next step would be to obtain ubiquitous communication capabilities. According to this vision, people must be able to communicate also when no support from an infrastructured network is available, needed or desired. In order to achieve ubiquitous communication, end devices must integrate all the capabilities necessary for IP-based distributed and decentralized communication. Such capabilities are currently missing. For example, it is not possible to utilize native IP telephony signaling protocols in a totally decentralized way. This dissertation presents a solution for deploying the SIP protocol in a decentralized fashion without support of infrastructure servers. The proposed solution is mainly designed to fit the needs of decentralized mobile environments, and can be applied to small scale ad-hoc networks or also bigger networks with hundreds of nodes. A framework allowing discovery of SIP users in ad-hoc networks and the establishment of SIP sessions among them, in a fully distributed and secure way, is described and evaluated. Security support allows ad-hoc users to authenticate the sender of a message, and to verify the integrity of a received message. The distributed session management framework has been extended in order to achieve interoperability with the Internet, and the native Internet applications. With limited extensions to the SIP protocol, we have designed and experimentally validated a SIP gateway allowing SIP signaling between ad-hoc networks with private addressing space and native SIP applications in the Internet. The design is completed by an application level relay that permits instant messaging sessions to be established in heterogeneous environments. The resulting framework constitutes a flexible and effective approach for the pervasive deployment of real time applications.The invention of the phone has radically changed the way people communicate, as it allowed persons to get in contact instantly no matter of their location. However, phone communication has been confined for decades to a fixed location, be it one's own house or a phone boot. The widespread affirmation of cellular technologies has had for fixed telephony a similar impact that the invention of the phone has had on communications years before. With mobile phones, people are enabled to talk with each other anytime and anywhere. Internet has also revolutionized the way people communicate. E-mails have soon become one of the Internet killer applications. Later on, instant messaging, popularly known as chatting, has gained huge consensus among net surfers. Only recently, the use of the Internet for voice communication is becoming mainstream, and the so called Voice over IP (VoIP) applications (Skype is probably the most famous for the masses) are becoming common use. Despite its popularity, Internet still suffers from the inherent limitations that affected early telephony: it is fixed. The usage of Internet on the move still does not constitute the easiest and most satisfactory user experience, due to capabilities and limitations of the access technology, terminals, services and applications. Efforts for mobilizing the Internet are ongoing both in the industrial and in the academic worlds, but several bricks are needed to build the wall of mobile Internet. This dissertation provides one of these bricks, describing a solution that allows the deployment of multimedia applications (chat, VoIP, gaming) in mobile environments. In other words, this dissertation gives solutions for facilitating ubiquitous Internet-based communication, anytime and anywhere. The vision that we want to become true is that Internet must become mobile in the same way as fixed telephony has become mobile thanks to the cellular technology. More than this, we do not want that users are limited by the presence of an infrastructure to communicate with each other. In order to achieve this, we present solutions to deploy Internet-based services and applications in environments where no support from servers is available. In other words, we enable direct device-to-device, user-to-user Internet communication. Our contribution is mainly focused on the steps needed to establish the communication, the so called session establishment or signaling phase. We have validated our signaling framework by building a chat application that utilizes its features and works in server-less environments. The custom server-less solution does not prohibit to connect at the same time with the Internet, so that one can engage in a chess game using direct communication with a person in the proximity while having a chat in progress with a friend using standard Internet services. The challenge that we had to face is that Internet services and applications are usually built implying support from a centralized server. In order to deploy direct user-to-user Internet services, while maintaining interoperability with mainstream services, we had to enhance native Internet services to work without infrastructure support, without sacrificing interoperability with standard Internet applications. To conclude, we have placed our brick on the still yet to be completed wall of mobile Internet. Our hope is that one day, thanks also to this brick, everybody will be able to enjoy Internet-based applications as easily as now it is possible to use mobile telephony services

State Net Neutrality

For nearly a century, state regulators played an important role in telecommunications regulation. The 1934 Communications Act gave the Federal Communications Commission authority to regulate interstate telephone service, but explicitly left intrastate calls—which comprised 98% of Depression-era telephone traffic—to state public utility commissions. By the late 2000s, however, as landline telephony faded to obscurity, scholars and policymakers alike recognized that the era of comprehensive state telecommunications regulation had largely come to an end.Perhaps surprisingly, however, the first years of the Trump Administration have seen a resurgence in state telecommunications regulation—driven not by state institutional concerns, but by policy disagreements over net neutrality. This Article addresses the broader federalism questions raised by this net neutrality clash. Part I provides an overview of telecommunications federalism from the 1934 Communications Act through the present day, looking at the division of federal and state jurisdiction over traditional telephone service, wireless telephony, and information services. Part II examines the various steps that states have taken to regulate broadband providers’ network management practices in response to the Commission’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order and assesses the likelihood that these initiatives will survive a federal preemption challenge. Part III looks more broadly at the question of state authority to regulate broadband network management practices. It discusses the statutory and constitutional limits on state power to regulate broadband providers. Once the sphere of potential authority is defined, Part IV addresses how states should exercise this power and highlights alternative tools available for states that wish to shape the net neutrality debate

Internet Interconnection Ecosystem in Finland

For both fixed and mobile network operators, interconnection constitutes an indisputably key element to provide end users with a variety of services. Internet interconnection is particularly an intriguing subject due to the importance of the Internet in our everyday lives and our genuine curiosity to grasp its underlying structure. This thesis aims to provide a holistic approach to study the Internet interconnections in a nation-centric stance. To accomplish the objective, initially the method that breaks down the key features of the interconnection analysis is introduced. The nation-centric analysis is conducted for Finland by jointly utilizing the Internet registry data and collected Internet routing data. Covering the last decade of the Finnish Internet, the longitudinal analysis yields significant findings for the Internet address usage statistics and the level of multi-homed networks, along with the classification and inference of relationships between stakeholders in the interconnection ecosystem. The implications that the emerging interconnection models pose for the future global service delivery among both fixed and mobile networks are expounded from the perspective of the existing domestic interconnection practices. The longitudinal interconnectivity study allows us to comprehend both technical and business interfaces between market players by revealing a complete list of customer-provider relationships. Within a national milieu, the assessment of the current Internet market dynamics and future implications of emerging models can be considered in more rationally anticipated manner. Hence, authorities who desire to design new pricing schemes and policies for future networking interconnections can be guided more thoroughly