Patrick Hellemans

Accounting Management in a TINA-Based Service and Network Environment

The ACTS FlowThru project aims to build a management system that supports the flow of management information across organisational and technological domains by reusing components that have been developed by other ACTS projects. After analysis of the available components, it was decided to split the trial business system into three parts. The problems addressed by each of the three subsystems were taken from each of the three business process areas identified in the TeleManagement Forum (TMF) Telecoms Operations Map: fulfilment (i.e. service provisioning and configuration management); assurance (i.e. adherence to SLAs, fault and performance management) and accounting (i.e. service and network metering and charging). This paper elaborates on the realisation of the accounting system. This system consists of a TINA-based implementation of multimedia service access and control on top of ATM switching networks. Accounting components are introduced both at the service and network level. The accounting components are responsible for correlating network and service level accountable events, resulting in a single bill for the service subscribers. Using the Accounting system as an example, the paper also illustrates the development methodology and guidelines adhered to by the FlowThru project. The reader is assumed to be familiar with the TINA business model [1] and to have at least a high-level overview of the TINA service [2] and network resource architecture [3] concepts. Some notion of the notational conventions adopted by the Unified Modelling Language (UML) is also assumed [9].

A signaling protocol supporting multi-media and supplementary services

The utility of an ATM (asynchronous transfer mode)-based broadband network will depend upon the availability of a wide variety of services, most of which have not yet been defined. A flexible and extendible control mechanism for invoking services is required to take full advantage of the potential network services. An object-oriented signaling protocol based on a call model that consists of a number of elementary building blocks which are combined to define network services is discussed. The focus is on its applicability for defining new services, using multimedia services involving an arbitrary number of connections and parties, calling number identification, and call deflection services as examples. A conclusion that can be drawn is that a combinatorial method for the definition of new services offers users and operating companies more power and flexibility without explosive growth in the number of standard service definitions.<<ETX>>

Development and Deployment of a Heterogeneous Set of Services Challenging a TINA-Based Telecommunication Architecture

The objective of the ACTS VITAL project is to demonstrate and validate the development, deployment, management, and use of complex heterogeneous service features on an Open Distributed Telecommunication Architecture (ODTA) defined in terms of reusable components. The project refines, extends and implements the Telecommunication Information Networking Architecture (TINA). The focal point of the paper is reporting on the services provided by the second release of the VITAL demonstrator, how they are supported by the ODTA and the conclusions from the trial at the end of the 2nd project phase. The paper also presents an overview of the plans for the final phase of the VITAL project. The reader is assumed to be familiar with the TINA business model [1] and to have at least a high-level overview of the TINA service [2] and network resource architecture [3] concepts.

Specification and development of a multimedia conferencing call model using distributed object oriented techniques

This paper reports on the specification and development of an advanced, feature rich call handling mechanism. The conferencing call model, referred to as the service session graph, is heavily influenced by, and has significantly contributed to, the TINA service architecture informational viewpoint. It is shown that two new features of the model, implicit stream binding and control mechanisms, allow telecom services to incorporate advanced conferencing features in a very efficient way. A number of implementations are described, where the call model is extended with a series of end-user services and runs on top of ATM networks.

Implementation of Hidden Concurrency in CORBA Clients

This paper reports on the introduction of concurrency at the client side, as an engineering solution to improve performance. It is shown that, by combining a wait-by-necessity principle, where the calling process only blocks when a return value of a function call is needed, with the handle concept, used to control the access to an object, hidden concurrency can be introduced into CORBA-based client components. Concurrency is achieved by splitting sequential calls to servers through the creation of dedicated threads. Hidden signifies the fact that the split is hidden for the client code by including the thread creation in the serverStub, while the synchronisation needed at some point in the client process is done through the handle mechanism combined with the wait-by-necessity principle. The introduction of this kind of concurrency can be done transparently from the client and server application code. The principle of hidden concurrency through the introduction of multiple threads at the calling side has been contrasted with the single thread scenario through an example, which takes on the TINA (Telecommunication Information Networking Architecture) Connection Management Architecture as a particular case study.

A new approach to service intelligence supported by ATM

The main objective of the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is to provide flexible broadband transport resources such that multimedia calls can be created in a simple manner. The goal of intelligent networks (IN) is to realize a control network that is completely separated from the transport network. The ATM control architecture does not incorporate the enhanced control services envisaged by IN. Therefore, a synergy of ATM and IN presents a possible solution for the telecommunication network of the future. However, certain control services logically belong to the terminals and are also easier to implement in the terminals. Moreover, the complexity of IN does not allow a rapid merger of both concepts. Therefore, a migration of some of the control service intelligence from the network into the terminals is proposed. The terminal developed at the Alcatel Bell Telephone RC is presented. This terminal demonstrates the power of the ATM network, and has an architecture which allows an easy introduction of enhanced control services in the terminal. The analogy between this architecture and the concepts that are introduced by IN is shown.<<ETX>>

Towards a generic service control and signalling

Considerable work has been spent on defining and characterizing the services and applications that could be offered on broadband networks. They include both well-known services that are offered by todays networks, such as telephony, and more advanced services, such as multimedia retrieval, that can only be offered through new broadband networks. The authors consider the new role the telecommunications network will play in the future. This new charter will influence attitudes toward service provisioning, service control, and signaling. They analyze the different classes of services known at present and try to extract the requirements with respect to service control and signaling. It is argued that a more innovative approach to the problem may be beneficial for service provisioning in the future. Key issues are the programmability of the network and the generic nature of the service control.<<ETX>>

Use of Atomic Action Principles to Co-ordinate the Interaction Between TINA Service Managers

TINA provides an architecture to support the Telecommunication Services of the future [2,3]. This architecture consists of a number of Service Managers (e.g. Service Session Manager, User Service Manager) that co-operate to provide Telecommunication Services to the users. In certain cases, complex interactions are required and this paper suggests the use of Atomic Action (AA) transaction principles to provide the required co-operation mechanisms.

Automatic protocol generation based on x.409 specifications

Abstract In recommendation x -409 the CCITT presents a standardised presentation and representation technique to define the data units that constitute the different x .400 protocols. Apparently, the x .409 recommendation will have a much broader field of application and will be used for a large number of application layer protocols. The machine processable nature of the x -409 specification language clearly demands for a software development environment. This paper introduces the tools developed at the Bell Telephone Mfg Co Research Centre to support the implementation of protocols based on an x .409 specification. The key of the protocol development environment is the generation of a PASCAL data structure as the internal representation of an x .409 protocol. A protocol specified in x .409 will yield an equivalent instantiation of such a datastructure. Based on this protocol representation, part of the protocol entity can be implemented automatically.