A study of a Java based framework for telecommunications services : a dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science, Massey University, New Zealand

Additional content held on disk with print copy in Library.In this report, we study some of the general issues surrounding the area of telecommunications service development including the history of telecommunications services, current service creation techniques and the network used by services. We also discuss the lack of service portability and reasons for it. The JAIN framework – a set of Java APIs for integrated networks – is introduced as an approach that elegantly addresses this. We present a survey of recent work in telecommunications services that relate to JAIN. This includes a discussion of the feature interaction problem, an overview of the Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture, in particular, its relationship with JAIN, and the rapidly advancing field of Internet Telephony. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the JAIN approach we present designs for two advanced services that use the JAIN framework. These services are Internet Call Waiting and Click-to-Dial. Finally, areas for future research are introduced

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

Performance of distributed information systems

There is an increasing use of distributed computer systems to provide services in both traditional telephony as well as in the Internet. Two main technologies are Distributed Object Computing (DOC) and Web based services. One common DOC architecture investigated in this thesis is the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), specified by the Object Management Group. CORBA applications consist of interacting software components called objects. Two other DOC architectures investigated are the Telecommunications Information Net- working Architecture (TINA) and a CORBA based Intelligent Network (IN/CORBA) system. In a DOC environment, the objects of an application are distributed on mul- tiple nodes. A middleware layer makes the distribution transparent to the application. However, the distributed nature creates a number of potential performance problems. Three problems in DOC systems are examined in this thesis: object distribution, load balancing and overload protection. An object distribution describes how objects are distributed in the network. The objective is to distribute the objects on the physical nodes in such a way that intern-node communication overhead is as small as possible. One way to solve the object distribution problem is to use linear programming. The constraints for the problem are then given by both ease of management of the system and performance concerns. Load balancing is used when there are multiple objects that can be used at a particular time. The objective of load balancing is to distribute the load e±ciently on the available nodes. This thesis investigates a number of de- centralized load balancing mechanisms, including one based on the use of intelligent agents. Finally, overload protection mechanisms for DOC systems are investigated. While overload protection is well-researched for telecom networks, only little work has been performed previously concerning DOC and overload protection. Also, this thesis examines the use of overload protection in e-commerce web servers. Two schemes are compared, one which handles admission to the e-commerce site on request basis, and another which handles admission on session basis. The session based mechanism is shown to be better in terms of user-experienced performance

An Interoperable Federated Naming Service Supporting a Pan-European Service Platform

This paper describes the implementation of a Federated Naming Service required for a widely distributed multi-ORB heterogeneous platform. This platform is being built to demonstrate and test the applicability of CORBA technology and TINA principles to support Telecommunication Public Network Operators (PNOs) in their attempt to open their interfaces to third party service providers. The introduction of a Naming Service requires the definition of a naming hierarchy and configuration of ORBs to interwork with the Naming Service. A distribution strategy for the Naming Service in the ESP was devised to minimise the cost of name look ups and to increase reliability of the platform. The support for federation of Naming Services i.e. interoperability of existing Naming Services is assessed. A federated Naming Service is the primary bootstrapping mechanism that enables the application objects throughout Europe to find each other. Unfortunately, the interworking between the available Naming Service implementations can not be achieve due to difference in Repository Ids. without further extensions to the Naming Services

Integration of Internet and Telecommunications- An Architecture for Hybrid Services

In this article, we propose an architecture for hybrid services, i.e., services that span many network technologies, such as the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), cellular networks and networks based on the Internet Protocol (IP). These services will play an important role in the future because they leverage on the existing infrastructures, rather than requiring new and sophisticated mechanisms to be deployed. We explore a few issues related to hybrid services and propose a platform, as well as a set of components, to facilitate their creation and deployment. The existing infrastructure is only required to generate specific events when requests for hybrid services are detected. We present the design of a service layer, based on Java, that handles the treatment of these special requests. Our service layer is provided with a set of generic components realized according to the JavaBeans model. We illustrate the strength of our architecture by discussing two hybrid-service examples: a calendar service and a call forwarding service

An Architecture for the Integration of Internet and Telecommunication Services

In this paper, we propose an architecture for hybrid services, i.e., services that span many network technologies, especially the PSTN and the Internet. These services will play an important role in the future, because they leverage on the existing infrastructures, rather than requiring brand-new and sophisticated mechanisms to be deployed. We explore a few issues related to hybrid services and propose a platform, as well as a set of components, to facilitate their creation and deployment. The existing infrastructure is only required to generate specific events when requests for hybrid services are detected. We present the design of s service layer, based on Java, that handles the treatment of these special requests. Our service layer is provided with a set of generic components realized as Java Beans. Hence, we can provide hybrid services without changing the existing infrastructure. We illustrate this strength of our architecture by discussing the call forwarding service

Network provider domain federation in TINA

Federation in TINA CMA (Connection Management Architecture) provides the mechanisms for cooperation between different interworking network domains possibly owned by different administrators. In order to be able to offer services to their users, these administrators must cooperate. We present an implemented and validated architecture including the federation techniques necessary. We illustrate the problem based on experience from a user trial, in which different operators, and suppliers with different equipment participate