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Mastering knowledge of the user profile is one of the technical cornerstones for service providers who handle a large amount of end user service consumption data and are well positioned to dynamically infer user interest domains. This paper presents a holistic approach to service personalization by offering a means to gather a users consumption data from different multimedia services, to create and track user profiles in real time, and to monetize these profiles through targeted content or other personalized service offers. We describe a multisource profiling engine that deals with both operatorcontrolled domains and overthetop OTT applications. In particular, to cover the Web domain, we combine the multisource profiling engine with a deep packet inspection DPIbased keyword inference engine characterizing users Web browsing sessions in terms of the most relevant keywords searched. © 2010 AlcatelLucent.

It is envisaged that services and applications will migrate to a cloud-computing paradigm where thin-clients on user-devices access, over the network, applications hosted in data centers by application service providers. Examples are cloud-based gaming applications and cloud-supported virtual desktops. For good performance and efficiency, it is critical that these services are delivered from locations that are the best for the current (dynamically changing) set of users. To achieve this, we expect that services will be hosted on virtual machines in interconnected data centers and that these virtual machines will migrate dynamically to locations best-suited for the current user population. A basic network infrastructure need then is the ability to migrate virtual machines across multiple networks without losing service continuity. In this paper, we develop mechanisms to accomplish this using a network-virtualization architecture that relies on a set of distributed forwarding elements with centralized control (borrowing on several recent proposals in a similar vein). We describe a preliminary prototype system, built using Openflow components, that demonstrates the feasibility of this architecture in enabling seamless migration of virtual machines and in enhancing delivery of cloud-based services.

Mastering knowledge of the user profile is one of the technical cornerstones for service providers who handle a large amount of end user service consumption data and are well positioned to dynamically infer user interest domains. This paper presents a holistic approach to service personalization by offering a means to gather a user's consumption data from different multimedia services, to create and track user profiles in real time, and to monetize these profiles through targeted content or other personalized service offers. We describe a multisource profiling engine that deals with both operator-controlled domains and over-the-top (OTT) applications. In particular, to cover the Web domain, we combine the multisource profiling engine with a deep packet inspection (DPI)-based keyword inference engine characterizing users' Web browsing sessions in terms of the most relevant keywords searched.

With the saturation of revenue from voice services, telecom operators are feeling the pressure to introduce new services to increase the average revenue per user. Customized ring‐back is one of the services that is gaining momentum across the globe. The service enables the subscriber (i.e., the called party) to provide customized ring‐back tone to a calling party, as provisioned by the subscriber in his/her profile, maintained in a network element. Lucent Technologies has developed the MiRingBack (MRB) service to meet this need in prevailing deployed networks. Telecom networks are going through two stages of evolution. Packet‐based services (e.g., packet services in wireless networks, voice over packet in wireline networks) are being introduced, and a unified, access‐independent packet core network called IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is being developed to enable converged end‐user services. In this paper we address how MRB can seamlessly evolve to adapt to changing network paradigms and thereby be enriched to provide not only customized audio ring‐back tones, but also multimedia content such as text, image, audio, or video. We describe the evolution of MRB service to Multimedia MiRingBack (MmRB) service using the packet service capabilities of the network as a converged end‐user service in the IMS domain. We identify and address the challenges in the evolution of MRB service and detail the call flow for MmRB. We also present experimental results from prototypical lab implementation in the IMS domain. © 2006 Lucent Technologies Inc.

A network processing unit (NPU) is increasingly becoming the processor of choice for building custom packet‐processing gateways. In this paper, we present an NPU‐based design and architecture for a packet data serving node (PDSN) in a CDMA2000* network. A PDSN is a packet‐processing gateway that interfaces between the Internet and the wireless radio access network to provide packet data services to mobile users. We map the different functions of the PDSN onto the packet‐processing engines and the core processor of an NPU. This involves a complete separation of the control plane, which is implemented in the core processor, and the data plane, which is implemented using a multistage packet pipeline mapped onto the packet‐processing engines. We describe resource allocation schemes for packet buffering and processing and also a flexible communication method with the core processor. The mechanisms described in the paper are general enough to be used to implement other NPU‐based packet‐processing gateways. We also present a prototype implementation of the PDSN on an NPU and show its superiority to commercial products by means of measurement experiments. © 2005 Lucent Technologies Inc.

An end‐to‐end virtual private network (VPN) session provides complete privacy and data integrity for enterprise users who access the enterprise network from outside the intranet. However, because packets are encrypted end‐to‐end from the client to the enterprise VPN gateway, it is not possible for network service providers (NSPs) to provide value‐added services to these enterprise VPN users, because such services require visibility into packet headers and application data. A network‐based VPN allows a user VPN session to be terminated at an IP service switch (IPSS) within the NSP's network. Another VPN session from the IPSS to the enterprise VPN gateway is used to carry traffic from the IPSS to the enterprise. Because packet headers and application data are visible in the clear at the IPSS, the NSP can provide value‐added services. In this paper we discuss a new VPN mechanism—which we call adaptive VPN—that enables enterprises to selectively trade off end‐to‐end security for value‐added services that can be outsourced to an NSP. Adaptive VPN makes it possible for traffic from a specific user to be carried on an end‐to‐end VPN session and/or a network‐based VPN session, based on the network access identifier (NAI) of the user and the application that is being accessed. We also describe the implementation of adaptive VPN in Lucent's VPN security products. © 2004 Lucent Technologies Inc.

Algorithms for arbitrating and scheduling transmissions from different transmitters sharing a common access medium arise often in the design of many shared and distributed systems. In this paper we present a distributed algorithm for arbitrating time-constrained transmissions on slotted shared access media. The two most important distinguishing features of our algorithm are: (1) unlike most of the other schemes that guarantee on-time transmission over shared media by centralized preallocation of slots, our algorithm is fully distributed and completely on-line; (2) it eliminates one of the common pitfalls of all slotted systems, that is, allocation in integral multiples of full slots. We derive sufficient conditions for schedulability and show that the proposed scheme achieves high levels of schedulable utilization. We also show that the schedulable utilization increases as the length of the allocation cycle increases and asymptotically approaches the maximum achievable utilization. We present a distributed slot access protocol to realize the proposed algorithm for ring architecture. The protocol can be easily modified for other topologies, such as bus and dual-bus networks. Using illustrative examples we demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm.