Mario Kolberg

Feature interaction: a critical review and considered forecast

The state of the art of the field of feature interactions in telecommunications services is reviewed, concentrating on three major research trends: software engineering approaches, formal methods, and on line techniques. Then, the impact of the new, emerging architectures on the feature interaction problem is considered. A forecast is made about how research in feature interactions needs to readjust to address the new challenges posed by the emerging architectures.

Compatibility issues between services supporting networked appliances

In the near future general household appliances, such as televisions, refrigerators, alarm clocks, stoves, and even lights, will be supplemented with a network interface connecting them to the Internet. Homes are being equipped with such networked appliances to allow a more convenient way of living. Such extensive automatic control of appliances leads to the concept of the smart home. Behind such automation, there is a lot of software controlling the appliances. This software, often referred to as services, applications, or bundles, is supplied by a range of service provider businesses. Hence, in a single home, appliances may be controlled by a multitude of services offered by a wide variety of different providers. Moreover, some services may require the use of other services. Importantly, these businesses are completely independent and may not even be aware of one another or their products. Hence, appliances may be controlled by more than one service, and indeed these controlling services are often trying to achieve different goals. This causes compatibility issues that need to be resolved for networked appliances to be successful in the mass market. This problem is well known in telephony and historically is referred to as the feature interaction problem. This article discusses the issue of compatibility between services in a home environment. Reasons why and how services interact are discussed, and a taxonomy of interactions is presented. Finally, an approach is presented that prevents interactions. The approach presented uses accepted and known device and protocol interworking techniques. Throughout the article a number of example scenarios are used to illustrate the issues. However, the emphasis of the article is not only to present sample services for controlling home appliances or identify specific interactions between such services, but to find a general solution to the feature interaction problem that can automatically detect interactions between services in the home.

A SIP-based OSGi device communication service for mobile personal area networks

This paper discusses the benefits of a proposed Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based device communication Service for deployment on a Mobile Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) framework. Mobile OSGi deployment provides a gateway to a mobile user’s Personal Area Network (PAN). When the SIP Service is deployed in OSGi, it is possible to bridge multiple devices and gateways, offering device and service mobility as users traverse multiple mobile and home networks. Additionally, the SIP Service provides protocol bridging via bridging bundles and grants application layer mobility to OSGi services. In this paper, we discuss a novel architecture, based on the deployment of the SIP Service in a mobile OSGi framework, which effectively delivers PAN and home network device interoperability. Finally, we offer a use case scenario and analysis of its implementation using our proposed architecture.

Parallelizing Peer-to-Peer Overlays with Multi-Destination Routing

A method is provided for parallelizing overlay operations in an overlay network. The method includes: identifying an overlay operation having a parallel messaging scheme; determining a destination address for each parallel message in the messaging scheme; encoding each destination address into a data packet; and transmitting the data packet over the overlay network using a multi-destination, multicast routing protocol.

Services and Policies for Care At Home

It is argued that various factors including the increasingly ageing population will require more care services to be delivered to users in their own homes. Desirable characteristics of such services are outlined. The Open Services Gateway initiative has been adopted as a widely accepted framework that is particularly suitable for developing home care services. Service discovery in this context is enhanced through ontologies that achieve greater flexibility and precision in service description. A service ontology stack allows common concepts to be extended for new services. The architecture of a policy system for home care is explained. This is used for flexible creation and control of new services. The core policy language and its extension for home care are introduced, and illustrated through typical examples. Future extensions of the approach are discussed.

Managing feature interactions between distributed SIP call control services

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is widely used as a call control protocol for Voice over IP (VoIP), and indeed commercial implementations are readily available off-the-shelf. SIP supports flexible service provisioning not only through third parties, but also end-users. Laboratory experience shows that as these services are interworking they are subject to the feature interaction problem. Feature interactions may considerably delay service deployment and hence are a threat to rapid service provisioning. This paper investigates the feature interaction problem in SIP-based services and investigates the application of a pragmatic approach. This runtime approach does not require any detailed information about the services and hence can be applied in a competitive market. Furthermore, the technique is particularly strong in handling interactions between distributed services - a key characteristic of SIP-based services. Moreover, the approach is fully distributed without any centralised components, and includes detection and resolution of feature interactions.

Meta service discovery

Meta service discovery is used to find and select a service discovery mechanism by context. As multiple service discovery mechanisms (SDM) proliferate across various administrative domains, mobile devices will require a way to locate and select the appropriate mechanism according to the context of the mobile device, such as network domain, location, protocol, and application. We define meta service discovery and explain the motivation for it. We describe our results in building a meta service discovery capability on three existing DHTs and integrated into a new broadcast-oriented SDM. Finally, we analyze the sizing and distribution of DHT entries, including hash distribution of SDM entries according to a geographic population-density scheme

An online approach for the service interaction problem in home automation

Home automation is maturing with the increased deployment of networks and intelligent devices in the home. Along with new protocols and devices, new software services have emerged and worked together releasing the full potential of networked consumer devices. Services may include home security, climate control or entertainment. With such extensive interworking, the phenomenon known as service interaction, or feature interaction, appears. The problem occurs when services interfere with one another causing unexpected or undesirable outcomes. Whereas previous approaches to solving service interaction have focused on the service, the technique presented here concentrates on the device and its surrounding environment, as some interactions may happen through conflicting effects on the environment. The concept of environmental variables is introduced, a variable may be room temperature, movement or perhaps light. Drawing inspiration from the operating systems domain, access to the device and environmental variable is controlled. Using this technique, undesirable interactions are avoided.

A pragmatic approach to service interaction filtering between call control services

Triggered by the deregulation of the telecommunications market, it is expected that the number of services deployed in the telecommunications network will increase dramatically in the near future. It is expected that these services will be interworking. However, as widely reported, interworking services will be subject to the service interaction problem. It is essential to cope with the problem in a developing multi service provider environment as it may substantially delay service deployment and hence form a serious obstacle to rapid service provisioning.In order to cope with the increasing number of services deployed in the network, previous work suggested the application of filtering approaches. This paper suggests such a technique. It is pragmatic in nature and does not require detailed service knowledge. Furthermore, it is shown how the approach can be incorporated into an overall comprehensive service interaction management process. Even though the approach is applied to call control aspects only, it could be extended to cover other areas.

Feature interactions in services for Internet personal appliances

This paper investigates the feature interaction problem, known from traditional telephony environments, in the context of Internet personal appliances (IPA). IPAs are dedicated consumer devices which contain at least one network processor. They include the Internet alarm clock, which takes into account road conditions or expected arrival times of air planes when setting the alarm time, or the Internet enabled fridge, which keeps an inventory of groceries and issues orders to suppliers. The results of our investigation are threefold. The first part of this paper introduces a service taxonomy supported by a list of example services. The second part discusses feature interactions between services for appliances. A classification for such interactions and example interactions and possible conflicts are presented. The final part contains an outline for an approach to handle such interactions.