Telecommunication Services Engineering- Definitions, Architectures and Tools

This paper introduces telecommunication services engineering through a definition of services, of network architectures that run services, and of methods, techniques and tools used to develop services. We emphasize the Intelligent Network (IN), the Telecommunication Management Network (TMN) and TINA architecture

Specification of multiparty audio and video interaction based on the Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing

The Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP) is an emerging ISO/ITU-T standard. It provides a framework of abstractions based on viewpoints, and it defines five viewpoint languages to model open distributed systems. This paper uses the viewpoint languages to specify multiparty audio/video exchange in distributed systems. To the designers of distributed systems, it shows how the concepts and rules of RM-ODP can be applied.\ud \ud The ODP ¿binding object¿ is an important concept to model continuous data flows in distributed systems. We take this concept as a basis for multiparty audio and video flow exchanges, and we provide five ODP viewpoint specifications, each emphasising a particular concern. To ensure overall correctness, special attention is paid to the mapping between the ODP viewpoint specifications

Security in a Distributed Processing Environment

Distribution plays a key role in telecommunication and computing systems today. It has become a necessity as a result of deregulation and anti-trust legislation, which has forced businesses to move from centralised, monolithic systems to distributed systems with the separation of applications and provisioning technologies, such as the service and transportation layers in the Internet. The need for reliability and recovery requires systems to use replication and secondary backup systems such as those used in ecommerce. There are consequences to distribution. It results in systems being implemented in heterogeneous environment; it requires systems to be scalable; it results in some loss of control and so this contributes to the increased security issues that result from distribution. Each of these issues has to be dealt with. A distributed processing environment (DPE) is middleware that allows heterogeneous environments to operate in a homogeneous manner. Scalability can be addressed by using object-oriented technology to distribute functionality. Security is more difficult to address because it requires the creation of a distributed trusted environment. The problem with security in a DPE currently is that it is treated as an adjunct service, i.e. and after-thought that is the last thing added to the system. As a result, it is not pervasive and therefore is unable to fully support the other DPE services. DPE security needs to provide the five basic security services, authentication, access control, integrity, confidentiality and non-repudiation, in a distributed environment, while ensuring simple and usable administration. The research, detailed in this thesis, starts by highlighting the inadequacies of the existing DPE and its services. It argues that a new management structure was introduced that provides greater flexibility and configurability, while promoting mechanism and service independence. A new secure interoperability framework was introduced which provides the ability to negotiate common mechanism and service level configurations. New facilities were added to the non-repudiation and audit services. The research has shown that all services should be security-aware, and therefore would able to interact with the Enhanced Security Service in order to provide a more secure environment within a DPE. As a proof of concept, the Trader service was selected. Its security limitations were examined, new security behaviour policies proposed and it was then implemented as a Security-aware Trader, which could counteract the existing security limitations.IONA TECHNOLOGIES PLC & ORANG

Engaging Paradox in Situated Practice: A Study of Electronic Case Management in Family Law

This dissertation examines how organizational paradoxes are managed in practice, over time, and under technological change. Paradox theory suggests that technology is a disruptor, intensifying tensions and rendering them salient. Less is known about technology’s role in responding to tensions or the complex and situated experience of managing paradox. I investigate these issues through an ethnography examining the implementation of a new case management system in the Family Law division of a California county court. Employing a suite of theoretical lenses – sociomateriality, microfoundations, and power – I present three studies of organizational paradoxes upended following this change. In the first study, I explore the social and material actors involved in managing the tension between standardization and individualization in the performance of service. I find that different configurations of people, artefacts, and policies create opportunities to reframe the tension. Learning from errors allows each reframing attempt to reduce the space and time required for its performance, facilitating the gradual integration of competing demands. The second study examines how visibility into individuals’ actions is experienced in performance evaluation schemes that emphasize collective goals. I find that system features rendering individual actions visible trigger defensive behaviors focused on protecting individual interests above collective goals. Managers’ use of empowering actions and reassuring discourse reduce anxiety by anchoring individual performance standards and minimizing dissonance. In the third study, I examine shifting power dynamics in the negotiation of belonging across multiple groups. I find three ways in which the new case management system serves as a tool for circulating power among courtroom clerks, managers, and judges: collapsing the spaces of role play, creating opportunities for concessions, and (re)defining expertise and its relative influence. Taken together, this research shows how the transformation in court services under electronic case management echoes a transformation in the meaning of service for those charged with its provision. As performing, organizing, and belonging tensions are upended and repaired under the new technology, new practices shift the focus of service from customer to case file, challenge employees’ shared sense of responsibility to case resolution, and surface new identities and sources of power

A Consumer Premises End User Interface for OSA/Parlay Applications

Student Number : 9812990V - MSc project report - School of Electrical Engineering - Faculty of Engineering and the Built EnvironmentThe NGN is a multi-service network which inter-works with the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), the voice network and the data network provided by Internet. Through network independent APIs such as OSA-Parlay, the NGN slowly migrates and converges Telecoms and IT networks, voice and Internet, into a common packet infrastructure. The OSA/Parlay group defines a softswitch architecture which provides network independent APIs or SCFs that enable cross network application development The Parlay softswitch provides connectivity to underlying transport networks for application providers. The standard specifies the interaction between application providers and the softswitch. However, the standard does not specify an interface to regulate the interaction between service providers and the consumer/end user domain. This means that applications housed in the service provider domain have no defined interfaces to manage service delivery to the consumer domain. For most service providers, the lack of a non-standardized API set impedes efforts to decrease application creation and deployment time. This research investigates the design and implementation of a standard consumer interface which can be used by application providers within an OSA/Parlay system to deliver service content to end users. The main objectives with regard to the functionality provided by the interface include the integration of facilities which will assist application providers to manage end user access and authentication (to enable users to establish a secure context for service usage), subscription (to handle the subscription life cycle), and service usage management (to enable the initiation and termination of services). The TINA-Consortium (TINA-C) has developed a service architecture to support the creation and provisioning of services in the NGN. The TINA architecture offers a comprehensive set of concepts and principles that can be used in the design of NGN services. The architecture consists of a set of reusable and interoperable service components encapsulating a rich and well defined set of APIs aimed at supporting the interaction between application providers and consumers. TINA’s session concepts, information structures, interfaces and service components can be used to support the design of a consumer premises end user interface for OSA/Parlay. This research also aims to explore the feasibility of using the TINA API within an OSA/Parlay system to support consumer domain service delivery. In order to implement the consumer interface for Parlay applications, the ability of the TINA service architecture to provide Access and Authentication management; Subscription and Profile management; and Service Usage management was investigated. The report documents the design and implementation of an OSA/Parlay consumer interface utilizing TINA service components and interfaces

A method to ease creation of telecommunications services based on a Generic Component Model

This paper proposes a method to ease the creation of -distributed- telecommunications services. The method is based on a generic component model which is a common software architecture applicable to the design of every component of a telecommunications service. The concepts, architecture and specification of the Generic Component Model are presented. The method based on the Generic Component Model is then applied to the design of a Connection Management Service on top of an ATM communication platform Keywords: TINA, Service Specification, Design and Management

SIP servlets-based service provisioning in MANETs

Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks (MANETs) are a part of the fourth generation networks vision. They are new wireless networks having transient mobile nodes with no need for a pre-installed infrastructure. They are of utmost interest for the future networks owing to their flexibility, effortlessness of deployment and related low cost. They come in two flavours: standalone MANETs and integrated with the conventional 3G network. Providing value-added services is the core concept of several paradigms and has been extensively studied in legacy network. However, providing such services in MANETs is a challenging process. Indeed, MANETs are known for their heterogeneous devices, limited resources, dynamic topology and frequent disconnections/connections. New SIP based solutions for signalling and media handling in these networks are emerging. Furthermore, SIP is the primary protocol for 3G networks. Therefore, SIP servlets become a promising paradigm for service provisioning in MANETs. This thesis addresses the service provisioning aspects in both standalone MANETs and integrated 3G/MANETs. The SIP servlets framework is considered as the starting point while Multihop Cellular Networks (MCNs), the widely studied networks, are used as an example of integrated 3G/MANETs. Background information is provided, architectures requirements are derived and related work is reviewed. A novel business model is proposed for service provision in standalone MANETs. The business model defines the business roles and the relationship and interfaces between them. We also propose a service invocation and execution architecture implementing the business model. The solution is based on overlay network and a distribution scheme of the SIP servlets engine. The overlay network enables self-organization and self-recovery to take into account MANETs characteristics. As for the integrated 3G/MANETs we propose high level architectural alternatives for service provisioning in MCNs. We identify the most interesting alternatives from the network operator point of view and proposed a detailed and concrete architecture for the promising alternative. Overall architecture, functional entities and procedures are presented. During this work, we built prototypes as proof-of-concept and made preliminary performance measurements, used SPIN as protocol validation tool and adopted OPNET for simulation. The results show that we can provide services in MANETs as we do in conventional networks with reasonable performance

Service creation and deployment on an intelligent network

Active competition in the telecommunications industry has caused a dramatic shift in focus for public network operators. Service designers need to be able to easily and rapidly create services according to the customer’s requirements. This is achievable by using Intelligent Networks (INs). Two primary goals of service development under the Intelligent Network paradigm are rapid service crcation using new software technologies and the minimisation of service development costs through switch vendor independence. This thesis examines the development of an IN architecture and the deployment of two call control services on it using the ITU-T Service Independent Building Block (SIB) methodology. The services are deployed on a narrow-band Excel switching platform. Various aspects of the IN Conceptual Model (INCM) are examined with a particular emphasis on the middle two planes: the Global Functional Plane (GFP) and the Distributed Functional Plane (DFP). Representations of these planes are designed using the ITU-T Specification and Description Language (SDL) [SDL89] and implemented using Telelogic’s SDL Development Tool (SDT). SDL provides capabilities to allow logical structuring of the INCM into its constituent entities, the modelling of communication between these entities and the processing within them. The Intelligent Network paradigm was developed with a view to extendibility. Two call control services, Ringback and Group Call Pickup, are implemented using the SIB methodology. Further services may be created by rearranging the order of execution of the existing SIBs or, if necessary, by adding new SIBs to the architecture. Given the demand for multimedia applications to run on top of emerging broadband networks it is becoming increasingly more important for network operators to study the enhancement and evolution of their IN service platforms in order to cope with new customer requirements. TINA is the leading architecture for multimedia service control and delivery, which defines an emerging open service platform. Migration from IN to TINA is explored in this thesis by considering two individual paths of migration. The first path involves the replacement of the IN service control and management elements (SCF, SMF, SDF) with appropriate TINA Computational Objects while the switching elements (SSF, CCF) remain IN compliant. As there is no one-to-one mapping of IN functional entities to TINA computational objects, an Adaptation Unit is required to facilitate interaction between the legacy IN entities and the TINA Computational Objects. The advantage of this step is that it is possible to keep the investment of deployed IN SSPs while taking advantage of TINA service modelling. The second step involves the introduction of TINA into the switch. In this approach the switch and its switching capabilities may be viewed as a TINA object in itself. Interworking between IN and TINA (as a step towards full migration to TINA) yields a much richer service platform. This service platform facilitates the creation of services that incorporate both IN and TINA features. A TINA service may use pieces of IN functionality and IN services may also use TINA functionality. It is possible to invoke these hybrid services from either a PSTN or a TINA terminal. Three hybrid IN/TINA services were designed to demonstrate the increased resources available to the service designer using such a platform. A user connected to the IN switch invokes the Freephone Service. This service uses a TINA database to convert the 1-800 number to an extension number. The call is then connected using IN switching functionality. The Audio Video Conference, uses TINA computational objects to set up a video stream between participating users while the audio connection is handled by the IN switching functionality. This service is invoked from a TINA terminal. A user connected to the IN switch invokes the Ringback Service but it runs in the TINA domain using both TINA and IN functionality. Therefore, as well as presenting an application of the IN technology, this thesis proposes possible steps towards migration to the TINA architecture

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

Managing Next Generation Networks (NGNs) based on the Service-Oriented Architechture (SOA). Design, Development and testing of a message-based Network Management platform for the integration of heterogeneous management systems.

Next Generation Networks (NGNs) aim to provide a unified network infrastructure to offer multimedia data and telecommunication services through IP convergence. NGNs utilize multiple broadband, QoS-enabled transport technologies, creating a converged packet-switched network infrastructure, where service-related functions are separated from the transport functions. This requires significant changes in the way how networks are managed to handle the complexity and heterogeneity of NGNs. This thesis proposes a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based management framework that integrates heterogeneous management systems in a loose coupling manner. The key benefit of the proposed management architecture is the reduction of the complexity through service and data integration. A network management middleware layer that merges low level management functionality with higher level management operations to resolve the problem of heterogeneity was proposed. A prototype was implemented using Web Services and a testbed was developed using trouble ticket systems as the management application to demonstrate the functionality of the proposed framework. Test results show the correcting functioning of the system. It also concludes that the proposed framework fulfils the principles behind the SOA philosophy