Validation of the Parlay API through prototyping

The desire within the telecommunications world for new and faster business growth has been a major drive towards the development of open network API. Over the past 7 years several (semi) standardization groups have announced work on network API, including TINA-C, JAIN, IEEE P1520, INforum, 3GPP, JAIN, Parlay. The Parlay group seems most successful in attracting industry awareness with their API, called the Parlay API. The rational behind the Parlay API is that it attracts innovation from third parties that are outside the network operator's domain to build and deploy new network-hosted applications. This also means that the public telecommunication network is opened for niche and short-lived applications as well as for applications that possibly integrate telephones with other terminals such as PC. The Parlay group has successfully passed the first two phases of success, namely publishing their API on the right moment in time and attracting a critical mass within the telecommunication industry with their results. Prototyping the API on a real network execution platform is the only way to show its technical feasibility. Such an exercise was executed internally within Lucent Technologies and raised a number of questions as well as recommendations on both the technical and the semantical behavior for systems that will be interconnected via the Parlay API. We share these results, showing the drawbacks and advantages as well as challenges for this AP

Open Access to Resource Management in Multimedia Networks

The paper is dedicated to mechanisms for open access to resource management in the Internet Protocol (IP) multimedia networks. First we present the concept of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and explain the IMS functional architecture, principles of quality of service management and service control in IMS. Then we describe the idea behind the opening of network interfaces for third parties so that others besides the network operator can create and deploy services. Open Service Access (OSA) and Parlay appear to be the technologies for value-added service delivery in multimedia networks. In the paper we take a closer look to the Parlay/OSA interfaces that allow third party applications to access the resource management functions in IMS. OSA "Connectivity Manager" interfaces and OSA "Policy Management" interfaces are considered. Parlay X Web Services interfaces provide a higher level of abstraction than Parlay/OSA interfaces and gain an amazing amount of support among service developers. We address "Applicationdriven Quality of Service" Parlay X Web Service and "Policy" Parlay X Web Service also

A MARK-UP APPROACH TO SERVICE CREATION

The paper presents a new mark-up approach to service creation in Next Generation Networks. The approach allows access to network functions exposed by open application programming interfaces. Based on ontology analysis of the application domain, language constructions are synthesized and formally defined. Language supporting tools are developed. The approach functionality is tested by simulation

Future Open Mobile Services

The major barriers for the success of mobile data services are the lack of comprehensible mobile service architectures, their confusing business models and the complexity combined with the inconsistency of the technology enablers. This paper attempts to present a more structured and comprehensive analysis of the current mobile service architectures and their technology enablers. The paper starts with a thorough study of the evolution of mobile services and their business models, and a collection of expectations of the different actors, including the end-user. Next, starting from the original mobile services architecture and environment, an attempt to place the different technology enablers in relation to each other and in relation to their position in the mobile system, will be carried out. Each technology enabler together with their contribution in the enhancement of mobile services are then summarised in a complete and comprehensive way. The paper concludes with a recapitulation of the achievement of the state-of-the-art technology enablers and an identification of future improvements

Convergence-analysis of the internet and the telecommunication architectures

The convergence of the Internet and Telecommunication Architectures is a key issue in today’s telecommunication world. It is foreseen that future versions of UMTS will be all-IP based, and therefore the interest in this area is increasing. The focus in this paper is to show how to access IN-services from the Internet and other IP-based networks. Previous research of the interworking between PSTN and IP-networks will be discussed. The respective advantages of different architectures are presented and some solutions of building a bridge between the protocols used in these networks are described. Further, this paper presents some of the performance problems that may occur in such systems

Analysis of NGN service creation technologies

Network Operators can see next Generation Networks (NGN) as new revenue stream, thanks to the potential they could have in increasing the service offering. Therefore it’s important to understand how proposed technologies and solutions in NGN market can enable, flexible and easy service creation 3. This paper presents the result of the investigation of Eurescom P1109 project [1] in the area of advanced technologies that enable the introduction of new services in NGNs [5]. These technologies are evaluated with respect to some key evaluation criteria and then a comparison is provided

The development of a structured approach to service provisioning in a parlay environment

ABSTRACT The environment in which services are provisioned in existing networks has a number of shortcomings. Neither the service domain nor the services therein have a standardised structure. Signalling between terminals and services uses network protocols that are inappropriately oriented towards bearer management. The control of bearer connections, and the view of call states, is maintained in the network layer, making bearer management difficult and limited. A service-centric service provisioning environment is proposed, which advocates a structured service domain, and a structured approach to service development and provisioning. A direct communication path between terminals and services at the application layer, that utilises high-level, service-oriented protocols, is proposed. Control of the call / session layer and the bearer network, and view of connection states is relocated to the application layer, facilitating bearer manipulation by services located in the service domain. It is shown that the capabilities and features of services provisioned in the proposed service provisioning environment are of a greater range, more advanced and more complex. It is also shown that the proposed service provisioning environment brings about potential efficiency gains for the initiation of 2-party calls, and significant efficiency gains for the initiation of multiparty calls