ngn - athens university of economics and business · towards the ngn (next generation ... network...

C. Courcoubetis and G. StamoulisOTE seminar 4/2007

Towards the NGN (Next Generation Network)

The network has bigger role than offering bit pipes

Services use the concept of sessions (SIP)

The network controls sessions (associations)

Assigns resources (QoS), CAC

Offers open market for creating on-demand service bundles, service portal to customers

Performs accounting and billing

Network offers personalization and customization

Network services extend to higher layers than layer 3

Is in a better position to control users and influence e2e associations

No more network neutrality?


Next Generation Networks

Transition from single-service networks to multi-service networks

In NGN service intelligence is decoupled from network transmission

Offers converged services: fixed telephony, mobile telephony, broadband Internet, leased lines, …

Traffic from various access networks types is aggregated: fixed (ISDN, FTTx), mobile (PLMN), wireless (802.1x), …

Network is IP-based

Supports QoS (G/MPLS)

IP Core Network

Access

Access Access

Clients

Access

Access Access

Servers

Communcation Control

Content Content


The NGN layers

network


Next Generation Network

SPs to offer differentiated services

Rapid introduction of new value added services

Personalized applications to reduce churn and

enhance differentiation

Multimedia and Combinational (e.g. Fixed-Mobile)

Services

SPs require close User and Network control

Authentication, Charging, Policy Enforcement

(QoS, Security, Accounting…)

“Walled Garden” Service Concept for a wide variety

of Services

Network Convergence

Access independence and mobility

Transport convergence over IP

Reuse of common resources

Aging PSTN Equipment


Services in NGN

Subscriber Personalization

Actively Manage the Subscribers Identity and Adjust the Service Offering/Packaging (i.e., different identity in different worlds)

Mass-Scalability

Leverage Mass-Customization Principles: Service-Bundling; subscriber-Grouping and Per-Group Processing

Minimize support Calls: Self Management

Service Evolution

From Transport Based Service Models (Time/Distance/Volume) to Content Based Service Models

Flexible service creation is a must!

Many new applications will have lower adoption rate (likely <10%) therefore not justifying vertical solution


Service Customization and Identity

You can only customize for whom you know

Subscription defined Identity

Home-Network Provider

Access-Network Provider

Feedback & behaviour derived: Know the customer better than he does himself

Identity handling:

Pre-defined as part of the subscription (contract, portal)

Provisioned data: Identity gathering (from multiple sources and events)

Identity becomes a function of time estimated from the data path

Authorized service portfolio can be linked to Identity, associated to a subscriber “Session”


British Telecom’s 21 CN

ROW

&

Other

NetworksIP

DPCN

DSL

PSTN

PDH

Fibre

Copper

DWSS

ASDH

End

User

~5k

nodes

~2k

nodes

~400

nodes

~100

nodes

~15

nodes

MSH -SDH

~1k

nodes

Mesh -SDH

CWSS

ATMIP

PSTN

Kstream

Agg box

&copper

Leased Lines are

merged with

IP/ATM

Merge of

ATM/IP

Merge of

optical

technologies

Suppression of

PSTN


ΒΤ 21CN program

ΒΤ financial info

Revenues ~20b£

Profit ~2b£

Employees: ~100k

Employee Cost: ~5 b£

BT 21CN info

Duration: 2004-2010

Cost: 10b£

Est. Benefit: 1b £/χρόνο

5.000 employee reduction

Core

Node

Core

Node

MSAN

Core

Node

Metro

Node

Metro

Node

Metro

Node

Metro

Node

MSAN

MSANMSAN

MSAN

MSAN

MSAN

MSAN

MSAN

MSAN MSAN

Core Network

ISP 2

ISP 1

IPsphere

Creating a

commercially

sustainable framework

for IP services

Realizing Next Generation Revenues


The problem

Internet is not a single large infrastructure that continues to be

developed apace, but a federation of separate cooperating IP networks

An imbalance in the risk vs reward for the participants threatens the

cooperative outcome and the IP market

Today’s IP service framework lacks the means to compensate partnering

service providers in proportion to their contribution of resources to an

end-to-end service

How to ensure that investments in service innovation and infrastructure

development are rewarded and encouraged?

Need for mechanisms that allow the compensation for incremental

investments in development and deployment of new services

Any resource capability contributed to enhance an overall retail service

offer should be framed in a business context


The sustainability of the Internet

www services succeeded due to the almost zero marginal cost of

adding www applications to a fixed-price Internet access platform

This allowed many new diverse relationships and experiences to be

conceived and tried out, many www players forged significant buyer-

seller relationships on the basis of the Internet’s global connectivity

They arbitraged the relatively low cost of Internet BW, representing

net market loss viewed from the perspective of conventional telecom

service portfolios

Similarly, new operators enjoyed a low barrier of entry but eventually

did not managed to build sustainable businesses

Incumbents network operators naturally seek to develop new service

revenues to offset losses due to arbitrage of traditional portfolios

Conclusion: next generation of services and revenues will depend on

the online industry’s capability to sustain investment by all

stakeholders, and cheap enough not to drive innovation out


A solution

Middle ground: allow providers to specify and charge for services

offered to their customers and other providers

No incentive for walled gardens since revenue is generated by

participating in the service value chain of competitors


Handles the challenge of developing a standard efficient and flexible framework and business models to deal with operational and administrational processes associated with service planning, marketing, fulfilling and assuring

Service management and operations today utilize service-specific monolithic management systems linked to similarly monolithic network technology

As telecommunication providers move to a converged service delivery platform this vertical structure needs to be broken down in order to facilitate the creation, provisioning and management of these new services that span multiple provider boundaries and stakeholder control domains.

The IPsphere Framework has been developed to enable providers to concurrently optimize flexibility and efficiency by focusing on the translation of a generalized service offering into a set of generalized resource commitments to meet the overall service goals

In the IPsphere Framework Services are structured via the decomposition of a Service into constituent Elements that represent the capabilities of a set of technology resources

The IPsphere Framework allows a service provider (called Administrative Owner) to provide an end-to-end Service, while collaborating with partnering service providers (called Element Owners) that are responsible for the Elements composing the Service

The scope of the IPsphere Framework is based on two key aspects namely,

service abstraction: providing a mechanism to declare a service offer in terms of technical and business constraints

service decomposition: mapping a service offer to resource commitment across one or more providers.


“IPSphere” is the vision for an internet that

is capable of being partitioned into virtually independent service-specific subnetworks/overlays

– Internet will be a subnetwork with best-effort quality

service attributes can be controlled as on a private IP network

This vision is gaining increased attention from stakeholders

Successor of Juniper Networks’ “Infranet” vision

Members include service providers, system integrators, software developers and infrastructure vendors (including Cisco)

Purpose: viable business models for service providers

Tasks

Identify and develop the missing parts of the underlying IP infrastructure

– In association with a third-party body in order to be compatible with existing & emerging standards

Design a commercial framework that will bring trust among providers and create a more flexible value chain

IPSphere can complement IMS, by bringing QoS


IPsphere architecture elements

Traffic Handling (TH) Stratum delivers packets from one end point to another

Most traditional networking technologies and equipment reside in this stratum (routers, Multiplexers,…)

Network Policy and Control (NP&C) Stratum Coordinates the delivery of packets in the TH

Stratum (push policy decisions to network elements on the TH Stratum for enforcement)

– brings intelligence to the network

Traditional network OSS and policy servers reside in this stratum


IPsphere architecture elements

Service Structuring Stratum (SSS) Has few roots in traditional networking

Based on Web Services for managing collaborative services (service creation, discovery, negotiation, activation, assurance and provision)

– Every participating provider publish a list of “Elements” to a registry that represent services and roles the provider is willing to accept

– Services are created by assembling elements in a structured fashion

– A Grid-like marketplace


Vertically Integrated Services Explicit walled garden

Cooperative Services Revenues in proportion to

the resources each partner contributes (implicit walled garden)

Best-effort case: Internet

IPsphere internet


IPsphere service creation

The IPsphere divides a service into Elements, which include

Access

Transport/Connection

Content/Processing

Users/Access point

A given service may have any number of elements of any of these types as needed, and services are created by combining Elements contributed by providers.


IPsphere service examples


IPsphere characteristics

Assurance through SLAs

Security through well defined interfaces

Quality of service by setting up inter-carrier MPLS paths

Differentiated services

Not only on price, but service attributes as well

On-demand services: end-user applications shall automatically request the level of security, quality of service and bandwidth they need from their network provider and have that delivered across the internet

Backup slides


IMS Architecture

MRF

IMS Core

RNCMSC(Server)

SGSNGGSN

CN

MGW

BSC

UMTS/GPRS

SIP Application

Servers

P-CSCF

I-CSCF

S-CSCF

HSS

SIP Application

Servers

SIP Application

Servers

IMS Applications

MGCF

BGCF

MGW

VoIP Interworking

Elements

IP Bearer Network

DSL/Cable Modem

DSLAM/CMTS

WLAN

CDMA 2000


What does IMS provide?

Services and Control• Adds call session control to the packet network (GPRS)• Enables peer-to-peer real-time services - such as voice, video -

over a packet-switched domain • Scalable common service control (based on SIP) gives the ability

to manage parallel user servicesMixed Multimedia

• Ability to pick and mix various multimedia flows in single or multiple sessions

• Can handle real-time voice, video, dataAccess Independence

• Provides access to IP based services independent of the underlying access technology


Business Possibilities (1)

1. Faster Application Launch• Time to market

2. Mixed Services: Voice + Data + Video • Blended lifestyle services - customization• Multimedia Services (higher ARPU)• Operational Savings through unified all-IP network

3. Fixed – mobile Convergence• Bundle of services (quad-play)• Single network results in lower OPEX


Business Possibilities (2)

4. More Control in services

• Carriers offer services, not only bit pipes

• Preserve the Walled garden model and extend it to services

5. Reduced CAPEX and OPEX

• Competition on service quality as basic service offering becomes a commodity.

6. Market of service components

• Operators buy service components from many competitive suppliers (like in service Grid)


How? (1)

1. Faster Application Launch• Through reusing service modules (e.g. billing, roaming,

authentication, user profile data, DRM) for multiple services.• Through opening of networks to 3rd parties for new application

development

2. Mixed Services: Voice + Data + Video• With IMS acting as a “middleware” between the today’s different

networks (for voice, data and cable TV)• IMS offers standard means of mixing different media using

appropriate application servers

3. Fixed – mobile Convergence• Same as 2


How? (2)

4. More Control on service layer• Service level awareness• Access to services based on user profile (basic,prenium,gold) • Better Control in packet resources used

5. Reduced CAPEX and OPEX• Through simpler architecture, shared functionality and re-use of

infrastructure for multiple services

6. Market of service components • Through open and well defined interfaces which allow multi-vendor

interoperation


Open issues…

IMS does NOT ensure end-to-end QoS

Interoperability of different networks for end2end IMS services (both technological and commercial)

Services not standardized yet (a few will)

Fixed and mobile operators have different drivers Fixed operators need to tackle VoIP and increased competition

while mobile operators need to increase ARPU in a saturated oligopolistic market

Need for Compatible terminals Eg mobile capable of multimedia, IP adress, IDs, SIP clients

ngn - athens university of economics and business · towards the ngn (next generation ... network...

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