S-38.118 Teletekniikan perusteet Service Creation

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S-38.118 Teletekniikan perusteetService Creation

• Services, without any additional particulars,
  like bearer services, teleservices, QoS services
  etc. refer to value added and supplementary
  services.
• What are these services and why the creation of
  services is an issue?
• There are various supplementary and value added
  services that one can obtain from a telephone or
  a mobile phone by pressing a sequence of buttons.
  Basically, few people remember them and use them
  and it would seem like these services are rather
  unnecessary decorations.
• This is actually not so. There are services which
  are of great economic value to an operator or
  service provider.

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Service Creation, summary

• Examples of successful services include
• Intelligent Network (IN) Freephone in US, about
  60 of long distance calls are 800-numbers
• Camel Prepaid service for mobile phones in many
  countries, it reduces operators costs
  considerably
• In Finland information on telephone and mobile
  numbers, payable Premium rate number
• In some countries entertainment services
• Televoting, other mass call services
• Emergency calls, Malicious user identification
  not commercially succesful but very useful
  services
• Call forwarding, answerers, Virtual Private
  Network etc.
• These are voice services, but there are data
  services
• email, Web, file transfer are value added
  services
• transaction processing, web searching,
  advertisement services

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Service Creation, summary

• Combined voice and data services should have a
  large potential in the future
• Karaoke-on-demand in Japan is a success
• Other on-demand services (video, news etc. on
  demand) could work
• WAP-services
• Electronic payment
• Videotelephony, (video)conference calls
• Networked games
• Net location service (nearest taxi etc.)
• Virtual home environment
• The problem is, that we do not really know what
  services will succeed, but there should be
  possibilities to invent new services which become
  as popular as the Web. Only to invent what.
• That is why the goal is to make platforms and
  methods for service creation.

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Service Creation, summary

• Some claims on services
• There are new good services to be invented,
  probably everybody believes this.
• The services can be end-system services, network
  is needed only as a transmission media. This view
  is held by some but not by most
• You need network resources if you try to offer in
  an efficient way services which do any of the
  following things
• Change routing in the network, like number
  translation services in IN (Freephone,
  PremiumRate etc.)
• Change charging of the connection (like
  Freephone, PremiumRate)
• Can affect the dimensioning of the network (like
  Televoting)
• Use network for location of users or network
  elements (net location)
• Provide connections in a way anonymously (like
  PremiumRate)
• Limit access by network mechanisms (VPN)
• In some cases, handle multiparty calls
  effectively
• Many services can gain from accessing network
  resources, so the end-system view is not so
  popular.

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Service Creation, summary

• Services must be introduced very fast in a
  competitive environment. A view generally
  accepted to be true.
• Network should be opened for external service
  providers. A disputed view, some operators
  support it as it should speed up creation of
  services, not all operators support it as
  management will be more difficult.
• Service creation is a new business area -
  generally believed to be true.
• There will also be many free services. Probably.
• Electronic commerce will be very important.
  Probably.
• Security problems can be overcome.
  Probably/maybe.
• Services pop up spontaneously from the Internet
  and there is no need for any special service
  creation platforms. The view is probably
  partially correct but mostly wrong. It is fine
  for web pages, but more complicated services need
  solutions for charging, use of network resources,
  management etc.
• Technology for service creation is not clear.
  There are many possibilities.

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Service Creation, summary

• Service then is an application which is offered
  as a service by some party, so somebody wants to
  earn money by offering the service.
• A service platform is a system which facilitates
  service creation, provisioning and management.
• End-system applications like email and file
  transfer were developed originally in the
  Internet and proprietary data networks (like SNA,
  DNA)
• They, and other data application protocols, were
  considered as Value Added Services to be offered
  by an operator in the OSI model, but this did not
  succeed at that time. Now the data applications
  (largely using TCP/IP protocols) are offered as
  Value Added Services and there is much work done
  in order that operators and service providers can
  offer data, voice and video applications as
  services.
• Voice services were created first in the PSTN and
  the Intelligent Network architecture was made to
  speed up service creation. Most of the early IN
  services were invented before IN as services on a
  voice only network are of rather limited
  character.

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Service Creation, summary

• The Intelligent Network deployment is made in
  phases, called the capability sets. IN CS1 is
  deployed and is voice only, IN CS2 and IN CS3 are
  specified and offer a larger range of services,
  but the role of IN is unclear in the future
  network architecture. It is quite possible that
  IN technology will be used and certainly some
  ideas will be reused.
• Camel (Customized Applications of Mobile Enhanced
  Logic) is of current interest as it offers GSM
  Phase 2 users IN services. It is quite likely
  that Camel services, like prepaid, will exist for
  a long time.
• TINA (Telecommunication Information Networking
  Architecture) was an effort to put service
  creation and management on distributed processing
  platform using the ideas of ODP (Open Distributed
  Processing). There were several good ideas in
  TINA, notably use of middleware and TCP/IP under
  the middleware (CORBA) platform.
• From ODP TINA inherited OOD (Object Oriented
  Design) pronciples for service development. One
  can say that while TINA as such is dead, TINA
  ideas are reused in many modern approaches.
• There are solutions which simply build on CORBA
  (Common Object Request Broker Platform) and
  provide e.g. interworking of IP and SS7.

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Service Creation, summary

• IP phone may get IN services using an agent which
  connects to an IN SCP (Service Control Point).
  This approach is called PINT. It is of limited
  use.
• Parley is a new technology which offers an API
  (Application Programming Interface), in reality
  several APIs, for accessing network resources.
  One can create many IN services using Parley.
• Net location based on Parley is likely to appear
  in near future, as well as many other Parley
  services. Parley adds authentication of the
  service provider to the Parley Framework owned by
  the operator. Using Parley network resources are
  opened to untrusted service providers.
• OSA (Open Service Architecture) is very similar
  to Parley, currently OSA is a subset of Parley.
  OSA is standardized by 3GPP.
• JAIN is a larger effort to put Java APIs
  everywhere, connected with Java telephony
  (JTAPI). JAIN is based on the assumption that
  there will be several network technologies, so
  there are APIs to many common networks (IN, PSTN,
  GSM, IP) and they are unified on a Java platform.
  For service creation JAIN offers two solutions
  either you directly write Java services, or you
  use JAIN Parley interface and the services are
  offered by untrusted service providers.

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Service Creation, summary

• MExE (Mobile station Execution Environment) is a
  way of creating services where service logic is
  downloaded from the network partially to a mobile
  station, partially to a SIM card.
• SIM, USIM. In this technology service logic is
  placed on the SIM card of GSM or USIM card of
  UMTS phone.
• Mobile agents are a technology from the late
  90-ies where on top of a mobile agent platform
  you write applications (mobile agents) which can
  move in the network. Mobile agents have been
  proposed as a way to distribute Intelligent
  Network service logic. This technology does not
  offer special methods for service creation but
  agents are easy to write.
• VHE (Virtual Home Environment) is an effort which
  is standardized by 3GPP, but there are also many
  ex TINA people working on similar ideas. The
  intention is to provide the user everywhere with
  home environment, I.e., everything looks like at
  the home network. VHE is currently a combination
  of all possible technologies to create services.
  The VHE additions will be service, user, network
  and terminal profiles which are needed to give
  the user the home look and feel.

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Service Creation, IN

• In the Intelligent Network, if we follow the
  approach of the standard - which may not be the
  case in practice - service creation proceeds as
  follows
• IN CM (IN Conceptual Model) defines 4 planes.
  These are design planes for creating services
• In the Service Plane the service is described in
  words and a service is composed of service
  features. It is better to use existing service
  features as on a capability set of IN the defined
  service features can be implemented, other would
  require creation of new building blocks.
• For instance to create a Portable Number service
  we might use Local Number Portability and
  Universal Call Transfer, to create Caller-ID
  based services we might use service features for
  screening, routing and authentication. In
  general, definition of services is up to the
  operator, but services should normally be
  composed of existing service features.
• In the Global Functional Plane the services are
  realized as a chain of SIBs (Service Independent
  Building blocks). Some vendors offer an graphical
  interface SCE (Service Creation Environment)
  which has

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Service Creation, IN

• Graphical objects from which the SIB chain is
  made. These objects may be standard SIBs as in
  the IN standard, or something more or less
  similar, like logic diagrams. Anyway, in GFP the
  service is a chain of SIBs starting from the BCP
  (Basic Call Process) - describing in a logical
  way processing of a call - from some POI (Point
  of Initialization) and ending to one or more POR
  (Point of Return).
• In the Distributed Functional Plane the BCP is
  described as two automatons BCSM (Basic Call
  State Machine),originating and terminating. (In
  each switch there are the two automatons and the
  call establishment is jumping from one switch to
  another, but we need to worry only about that
  switch which executes the IN part of call
  processing.) The SIB chain is mapped in not
  one-to-one way to FEAs (Functional Entity
  Actions) and IF (Information Flows). There are
  many ways this mapping can be made. The FEAs are
  basic functionalities of Functional Entities
  (FE). There are a small number of functional
  entities in IN. They are SSF (Service Switching
  Function), SCF (Service Control Function), SDF
  (Service Data Function) and SRF (Specialized
  Resource Function).

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Service Creation, IN

• SSF is an extension of the functionality of a
  telephone switch so, that it can communicate with
  SCF.
• SCF is capable of running service logic programs
  (SLP), also called scripts.The SLPs contain the
  actions the service should do,like translate an
  800-number to another number, check credit card
  number in a credit card call etc.
• SCF needs some data. This data,like the valid
  credit card number, is stored into a database
  realizing SDF.
• SRF is a set of functionalities for giving the
  caller voice responses, collecting digits from
  the callers phone, recognizing voice etc.
• A main problem in the DFP is to map the SIB chain
  into detection points in the BCSM. The POI and
  POR points map either to the states of the state
  automaton BCSM or to places before the states
  called detection points. There are two types of
  detection points TDPs (Trigger Detection Points)
  and EDPs (Event Detection Points). To TDPs it is
  possible to set some trigger rules in order to
  start a dialog between SSF and SCF. The EDPs are
  used for instance when a call returns to POR
  continue call processing.

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Service Creation, IN

• In the Physical Plane (PL) the information flows
  are realized as protocols and the Functional
  Entities are placed into physical network
  elements. The IN CS1 contains the following
  physical entities SSP (Service Switching Point),
  it is a telephone switch with SSF functionality
  SCP (Service Control Point), it is a computer
  running service logic programs, SCP contains the
  functionality of SCF, but often it also contains
  SDF. There may be a stand-alone database SDP
  (Service Data Point). There is a faster version
  of SCP called Adjunct (AD), it is like SCP but
  connected to SSP via a fast link. SCP is
  connected to SSP via SS7 network. SRF can be
  placed in a special devise IP (Intelligent
  Periferial), but it can also be placed in SSP. It
  is also possible to place SCF to SSP, then the
  SSP is called SSCP, joint SSP and SCP. There are
  more functionalities in IN CS2 and CS3.
• The information flows are realized by the INAP
  protocol (IN Appilication Part). INAP runs on top
  of TCAP, which is on SCCP and SCCP is on MTP3.
  TCAP, SCCP and MTP3-1 are the parts of SS7.
• There is usually no need to change INAP when
  making a new service, though operators have their
  modified versions of INAP.

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Service Creation, Camel

• Service creation in Camel (Customized
  applications for mobile enhanced logic) is quite
  similar to service creation in IN.
• Camel enables interworking of IN and GSM so, that
  roaming GSM users can use their home services via
  IN. Camel introduces Camel SCF, called gsmSCF,
  and a new functionality to MSC (Mobile Switching
  Center) called gsmSSF. Camel services are
  provided as in IN when a Camel call comes to MSC
  with gsmSSF, the gsmSSF starts a dialog with
  gsmSCF using a simplified version of INAP called
  CAP (Camel Application Part).
• As GSM users are mobile, there is needed an
  additional operation, which is added to MAP
  (Mobile Application Part) gsmSCF can at any time
  make the AnyTimeInterrogation from gsmSCF to HLR
  (Home Location Register) in order to ask HLR for
  some information it needs.
• Often creation of Camel services is made with a
  Service Creation Environment with SIBs. There are
  the same problems of deciding where to put
  trigger tables to Trigger Detection Points in the
  BCSM, but the Camel BCSM is at least more simple
  than the IN BCSM.
• Camel is now at phase 3. The standards can be
  downloaded from ETSI, but a warning, there are
  many standards in Camel.

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Service Creation, TINA

• Service creation using TINA is relevant even
  though TINA is stopped as the OOD ideas have not
  disappeared.
• One is supposed to follow the ODP four viewpoints
  and define first (in the Enterprise viewpoint)
  the business model with the roles of the players.
  The next viewpoint (Information viewpoint) is to
  draw class diagrams with OMT (Object Modeling
  Technique), or UML, and sequence diagrams.
• In the Computational viewpoint one is describing
  computational objects and their interfaces. These
  interfaces are described in IDL, CORBAs
  interface definition language. Then the service
  is coded with some programming language. The
  difference to IN is that there is no separation
  between application development and service
  creation. In IN creation of a service usually
  will not require coding. In TINA it is coding a
  new application.
• TINA approach to service creation is inherently
  complicated and the architecture is so large that
  it cannot be seen to support fast service
  creation. Still, there can be useful concepts in
  TINA, like the service session interface, Dolmen
  mobility solution etc.

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Service Creation, CORBA and mobile agents

• TINA being so complicated, there have been
  attempts to create services using CORBA
  middleware platform but no TINA.
• With CORBA there are services and facilities that
  can be used for service creation. Also in this
  approach service creation is application
  development along ODP and OOD methodology.
• Some of the services, like ODP Trader can be
  interesting, however, one should notice, that
  CORBA does not support mobility very well.
• CORBA may be used to interface PSTN to IP, access
  databases etc.
• Mobile agent technology is one possibility. Then
  services are created in a suitable language,
  often Java, as objects on top of a mobile agent
  platform. The mobile agents move with simple
  instructions,like move to target system. Mobile
  agents have agent languages facilitating agent
  communication. There are no special guidelines
  for implementing services using mobile agents.
  Consider it one form of writing an application in
  Java with the difference that the object is
  capable of moving and agents can be forming an
  agent society.

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Service Creation, Parley, OSA, Jain

• In all these approaches service creation is made
  more easy by providing a Parley API, by which
  network resources can be used. Therefore the
  approach concentrates on services which need
  network resources.
• In order to create an application, the creator is
  describing his service with a sequence chart with
  Parley messages/method calls, like authenticate,
  discover, sign etc.
• Parley defines in addition to the Framework also
  Service Components, it can be compared to
  capability sets of IN in this respect. One can
  use the service components as service features
  and create desired services by describing the
  service as a message sequence chart.
• OSA is quite similar to Parley and service
  creation according to OSA will be even more
  similar in the future, at the moment OSA has
  adopted a subset of Parley APIs.
• OSA is originally strongly connected with the VHE
  (Virtual Home Environment) concept, but currently
  there are also other approaches to VHE than 3GPP
  VHE, for instance VHE by the Vesper EU-project.

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Service Creation, Parley
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Service Creation, Conclusions

• There are other possibilities for service
  creation including
• WAP
• MExE
• USIM
• TSAS (OMGs Telecommunication Service Access and
  Subscription specification)
• It is not possible to go into the details of
  these technologies in the scope of this lecture.
  It suffices to say that service creation is an
  area which is fast developing. There is need for
  service creation methods by which more services
  can be fast introduced.
• There is an equally problematic area of service
  management. It is connected with network
  management as service management is logically a
  part of network management. However, a large
  number of services, which are fast introduced may
  add special problems. In general, there is always
  the problem that a new service interacts in an
  unexpected way with existing services,