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Because of the cost and complexity of building bespoke service management systems, telecommunications management developers are moving toward the use of off-the-shelf componentware to satisfy their management requirements. However, a crucial problem with such an approach is the ability to integrate components to realise integrated management solutions. This paper identifies the technology requirements for the development of systems which support telecoms management business processes which are constructed from reusable components. It sets out requirements on component integration technologies that are expected to be key to the development of future operational support systems. The current status of relevant component integration technologies is reviewed in the context of these requirements. The paper outlines two telecommunications management case studies which are being conducted to evaluate these integration technologies. The paper draws some conclusions about the relative merits of the different technologies examined and make some suggestions for further work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Support for personal mobility will be among the key factors for success in the competitive communications market of the future. This paper proposes enhancements to the personal mobility support capabilities of existing service architectures. The TINA service architecture is considered to be our starting point. The key issues in this paper are the following. First, the definition of the required functionality and its design by means of appropriate service components. Second, the use of mobile intelligent agent technology for the implementation of the new components. Third, the integration of the agent based personal mobility support components to the "standard" TINA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the major efforts for standardising of service capabilities rather than standardising the services in UMTS is to achieve service differentiation and system continuity. While pre-UMTS systems thrived on the ability to access services in a same manner when user roamed, these new deregulation efforts of services will pose some problems in provisioning of services across networks. The concept of the virtual home environment (VHE) addresses problems like this but does not rigidly specify how services can be deployed. This contribution will discuss how agent technology can be applied for designing a service provisioning architecture based on the VHE concept. More importantly, the paper will focus on the importance of service inter-working for supplementing service functionality and discuss how agent communication based on FIPA2 ACL standard can be used to overcome this issue. Finally, the paper will discuss the design and implementation of a middleware known as a common communication module (CCM) used by service components on the network and the mobile nodes to perform ACL communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of developing agent-based applications requires at least two tasks that are usually tackled separately by programmers. On one hand, programmers need to develop business rules and other support tasks for agents. On the other hand, programmers need to develop user interfaces (UI) for agents in order to enable end-users (not only owners but also other third parties) to interact directly with them. This paper focuses on this second task (developing user interfaces) and describes the solutions offered by the AgentSpace mobile agent system. Basically, we show and discuss two complementary ways to gather user-interfaces with mobile agents. On one hand, mobile agents don't provide any UIs. This situation promotes the separation of the UI and the backend (i.e., the agent) which allows flexibility and reuse. On the other hand, mobile agents provide by default UI components, which consequently promotes agents as better units of development and management. This situation can be very suitable in the context of dynamic and large-scale applications such as those found in electronic commerce domains. This paper also shows the relationship between the application of these mechanisms and the model-view-controller architecture used currently to build user interfaces in modern object-oriented frameworks. Finally, this paper presents some concrete examples with source code based on the AgentSpace system in order to validate and clarify the discussed mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficiency of interactive Video on Demand systems (iVoD) heavily relies on the performance of the video servers. This paper presents methods to increase the iVoD quality of service and to simultaneously increase of the number of video clients by the addition of simple distributed Near-Client-Caches. This paper discusses intentionally cheap and simple algorithms and asserts their performance for systems in the transient state because this better reflects real-life situations than the usual steady state assumptions. The examined algorithms permit an increase of the number of clients at a video server by a factor of 3 compared with conventional iVoD systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the issues related to the implementation of electronic commerce of services. To illustrate the main features of electronic commerce of services, we have selected legal and administrative services. We describe in the paper the actors who take part in these services, the system architecture and the workflow that defines the interactions and interchange of information among actors. With these elements we have implemented an electronic commerce application inside the TRADE project 1 that demonstrates how these services can be offered in an electronic manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of commercial activities across networks has led to the network itself becoming a competitive marketplace with a multitude of vendors, operators and customers. In such an environment, users will' shop around' for the best deals in terms of network financial costs and services. Intelligent, autonomous and mobile software agents introduce an alternative approach that facilitates expertise-brokering activities on behalf of the users. In this paper we present such an agent supported brokering scenario. The scenario involves interactions between Java-based mobile agents and an interactive model of the network. The paper describes how this prototyping environment can be used to examine the impact of mobile agents for brokering network resources in the future open network marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a novel and promising approach to the rapidly growing topic of resource and service trading in the infocom arena. There will be rapid growth in all forms of electronic trading of services, information and resources. This market will be dynamic with the continual evolution of current services and the introduction of new services, and service and resource providers. However, current trading or brokerage techniques do not provide adequate support for an evolving market. The principal contribution of this paper is to establish a concept that explicitly addresses this concern. This is based on the use of active software agent techniques to implement electronic Chambers of Commerce within an architecture for service provisioning. This is in contrast to conventional techniques that are typically implemented using passive brokerage or repository-based techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Future broadband networks will provide end-to-end connections which span multiple networks, operators, domains and technologies. The ability to supply end-to-end connections depends on the ability to satisfy (in near real-time) end-user topology, schedule (availability of resources in the present or future), quality of service and cost constraints. This paper examines the problems imposed by schedule constraints, as they allow operators and service providers the ability to differentiate their offerings above the traditional connectivity, QoS, and cost basis. Such constraints are strongly linked to QoS issues, and also to maximizing the use of shared network resources and are therefore quite important for management of future broadband networks. In order to satisfy temporal constraints imposed by scheduled connections, both the management systems and managed resources involved must provide appropriate support. This paper presents an overview of several important management issues that are involved in the support of scheduled connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers conformance testing of TINA service components in the realm of the ITU-T conformance testing methodology, which provides the only standardized, well accepted and widely used test methodology and test notation TTCN. It discusses the use of TTCN for testing computational objects of service components and proposes an implementation approach to derive executable tests from TTCN, which can be executed on any CORBA compliant ORB (with minor efforts for ORB specific adaptation) to check the functional correctness of deployed service components in distributed object environments. The TTCN/CORBA gateway is a general approach for testing distributed systems. TINA is taken as an example in this paper only. The work presented has been partially supported by the EC ACTS project TOSCA-TINA Open Service Creation Architecture, AC237. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of Electronic Brokerage is based on the use of new information technologies so as to provide a service capable of facilitating and organising the relationship between customers and service providers in a multiservice environment. This new service supported by the so-called "Electronic Brokers", will allow service providers to publish and advertise their offers and, at the same time, will help end-users to access the offered services and information in an easy and efficient way. This paper presents an architecture for this electronic brokerage service that is currently being developed within the scope of the ABS (Architecture for Information Brokerage Service) ACTS European project. Although mainly developed for "electronic commerce" environments, the paper tries to show how the ABS brokerage service architecture can be useful for multi-service supporting architectures such as TINA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Location transparency masks the use of information about location in space and time when identifying interfaces. The Telecommunications Information Network Architecture's (TINA) Distributed Processing Environment (DPE) is used as a model in this paper. Location transparency is provided in the TINA architecture by locating the DPE between the application layer and the Native Computing and Communications Environment (NCCE). Current cellular systems employ the paging procedure to contact the mobile terminal in the case of incoming call establishment. This paper focuses on the examination of the paging procedure in relation to providing location transparency for applications requiring a cellular system to page a mobile terminal. Three layers are used: the application layer; the DPE layer; and the underlying cellular system (NCCE). Three scenarios are presented which locate the paging procedure in one of the three layers mentioned; the application layer, the DPE and the NCCE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, extensions to the Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture (TINA) derived from personal mobility requirements are presented. The paper reflects the vision of the EC/ACTS research project DOLMEN that is developing OSAM, an Open Service Architecture for fixed and Mobile environments. The paper takes into account requirements to support personal mobility in a multi-provider environment, as well as requirements to distinguish user information from terminal information according to the basic principle that, in a personal mobility support environment, a user can dynamically be associated to different terminals for different services. According to these requirements, an enhanced TINA Business Model, and the impact on and extensions to the computational model of the TINA Service Architecture are elaborated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of this paper is work that is being undertaken to define an interface for configuration management between peer service providers needing to cooperate in a deregulated telecommunications service market. The paper describes the context in which the work is being undertaken, the approach adopted, and the current status of the work in developing an information model that is both protocol and technology independent. The resulting object model is presented and experiences in protocol and technology independent modelling are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the activities undertaken in EURESCOM in order to meet the management requirements of multimedia services. These activities are being performed in the P610 project "Management of Multimedia Services" (July 96-April 98) whose objectives are to define a management framework, architecture and to establish methodological guidelines for the design of distributed management systems for multimedia services. The results obtained so far are described in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the very basic part of ATM services accounting and charging related issues — what usage measurement information ATM network must provide in order to perform usage sensitive bills to the customers, what kind of accounting information can be used between operators and which part of the network is responsible for collecting and transfer that information to the management entities. A global set of usage metering parameters that network operators find of primary importance are also discussed. It also identifies measurement points for those parameters and finally it describes what additional functionality has to be implemented in the network elements in order to produce usage sensitive metering. The information summarised in this paper is based on the results achieved in the framework of the EURESCOM P616 project "Enhanced ATM Implementation Issues" within the Task T3: Charging and Accounting Parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the issue of integrating the Internet with the Public Switched Telecommunication Networks in order to devise an architecture encompassing the advantages of both worlds. Key TINA (Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture) concepts like the session concept and the computational modeling concepts are used to provide the glue for such an integration. The result is the enhancement of the Internet with real-time packet delivery capability as well as advanced billing features that successfully exploit existing billing systems. Value added service features are offered to Internet End Users by means of this platform. The architecture described in this paper is currently being developed within the Italtel project called SISTINA (Solutions for Integrated Services à la TINA). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Telecommunication systems in general, and Intelligent Networks as well, are large distributed systems with a high degree of concurrency. To investigate the specific aspects of the behaviour of such systems adequate formal specification techniques are required. In this paper, we show how designers of services in an Intelligent Network can use Coloured Petri Nets, to obtain a description of the services which on the one hand is precise and unambiguous, and on the other hand provides the basis for a comprehensive and thorough understanding of the behaviour by visualising the processes. Coloured Petri Nets supported by adequate tools can therefore serve as basis for investigations of new services to be provide. For a formal description technique to be successful, it is necessary to have tool support. This provides the designer with support for the development and test of the design. Further more the tool should also allow flexible graphical feedback which can be tailored to the needs of the specific domain in question. In this paper we show how the overall system behaviour of an Intelligent Network can be visualised, how the user can interact with the system, and how the history of important events can be captured in ways which are easy to understand for engineers familiar with Intelligent Networks, even though unfamiliar with the formal description technique in use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on research work to facilitate the user validation process in an application-orientated fashion based on executable formal specifications. It is part of an ongoing effort to move towards quality requirements via graphical visualisations of formal specifications. It builds upon previous work that supports the animation of Z specifications in a LISP-based environment called ZAL (Z Animation in LISP). In addition, it embodies a visualisation system called ViZ (Visualisation in Z) which enables the comprehension, clarification and validation of executable formal specification notations. Technology provided by ViZ allows software developers to choose an appropriate representation of objects used in an executable formal specification and create dynamic and/or static animations of these objects in an interactive and iterative fashion. ViZ provides a generic visualisation model to capture the process of visualising static and dynamic behaviour of a ZAL specification. This paper outlines our approach, details ViZ and illustrates its application in a real-world setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extensible Markup Language (XML) is gaining a lot of attention in the Internet world and is adopted by major companies (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle). XML, the open-standards child of SGML, promises to provide platform- and language neutral data encapsulation and separates application logic from application data. Meanwhile, various object-oriented technologies and standards such as Java and CORBA have also progressed rapidly in the past few years. Java is being presented as the perfect partner for XML. Java supports the development of Web-aware, platform-neutral applications, and XML is a platform-neutral document description meta-language. But doesn't CORBA promise exactly the same? This paper describes the XML and CORBA ‘approaches', and the synergies and/or competition between these technologies, taking into account the "philosophy" of each approach. Different criteria are identified where comparison is possible and relevant, such as: specification (e.g. expressive power), deployment (parsing, marshalling, scalability), and tools. XML is the next step in Web-protocols (after IP, HTML). It is concluded that XML can in conjunction with a multitude of other protocols provide the same functionality as CORBA, but will only replace CORBA in those cases where using CORBA is undesirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss the possible position location architectures in cellular networks, their advantages and disadvantages. Localization of mobile terminals is an essential application for cellular networks. The ability to locate subscribers will give rise to developed networks, that will offer a variety of new services. Standardization groups are already investigating the possible solutions and preparing the networks for the integration of the new elements, related to localization. The recently issued FCC requirements are presented together with the current technological status. Then the candidate location-based systems, based on the generic architecture proposed by ETSI for location based services in GSM, are given. These systems are evaluated and finally a network architecture based on a hybrid positioning method is presented, which appears quite advantageous compared with the other techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligent Networks (IN) are used in telecommunication networks to provide services that require a decision-making network element. This element is the Service Control Point (SCP). An overload of an SCP can result in a great reduction in the Quality of Service (QoS) provided by the IN. While traditional IN load control algorithms assume a single service network model or make use of a centralized controller, in this paper we propose and investigate a market-based model for solving the distributed IN load control problem for a multi-service network, where any service can be provided by any SCP. Furthermore, we study a realization of this model based on a multi-agent system (MAS) and finally draw conclusions as to both its efficiency and effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an Accounting Management architecture, based on TINA principles. Accounting management is defined and positioned in the service provision chain. A relevant computational architecture is proposed and some of the involved computational entities are modeled as agents. A discussion follows on the merits of introducing agents to cater for certain accounting management activities. The ACTS AC325 MONTAGE project provides the main source of the presented work and results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Telecommunications network management has attracted a lot of attention in terms of research and standardisation in the last decade. TMN and TINA architectural frameworks try to address the management needs of broadband networks and services. They both cater for multi-domain, multi-operator environments while they also allow for electronic customer access to management services. These services, though, are fixed in the sense that new features can only be added after a full research-standardisation-deployment cycle and are static as far as their use: they execute according to their in-built logic and clients may customise their operation only through tuning standardised operational parameters before service execution. The advent of mobile agent technologies opens new possibilities, allowing dynamic and customisable services to be offered to clients. In this paper we explain how mobile agents can enhance traditional connectivity management services, presenting the relevant architecture and design of a customisable network management system based on mobile agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network Control is currently carried out mainly by means of signalling protocols. Although these protocols are robust and facilitate standardisation, they present several drawbacks such as the inability of the Service Providers to adapt network resource control to the particular needs of their services, or the difficulty in deploying advanced traffic control schemes in order to achieve increased utilisation. An open distributed software architecture for Network Control based on concepts such as Intelligent Agents can provide a solution to this problem. This paper highlights the major issues of this problem and presents the architecture and implementation of a system that enables open and flexible network control and resource management using intelligent agents. The description of the architecture is complemented by experimental results as well as a generic implementation framework for deploying open programmable control capabilities in existing networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deployment of distributed applications has been mainly a manual task, despite of the proprietary solutions that already exist in the market. Due mainly to the heterogeneity of the operational environment and the software to be deployed, deployment is something that is usually done by writing installation and configuration scripts in an appropriate scripting language. With the wide acceptance of Enterprise Java Beans and the arrival of the CORBA 3.0's Components, an extraordinary opportunity for automating the deployment process has emerged. This is the basis for this paper, in which we define the concept of deployment, present a list of assumptions that would enable the automation of the process and establish a list of requirements on the deployment process itself and on deployment means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the COSEC methodology, a component oriented methodology for service creation. Important are the different abstraction levels, targeting a wide range of users, going from software engineers to high-end users. On a low level we create reusable developer components that groups consistent fragments of UML, SDL and Java. These developer components are composed and augmented with user-interface aspects, documentation and customization parameters to form a customer component. On a higher level, these customer components are customized and composed within a customer framework, yielding in an executable service. This combination forms an answer to the challenge of organizational and technological problems in the creation of telecom services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberalisation of telecommunications encourages competition between the various actors in the Open Service Market (OSM). In this highly competitive context, Connectivity Service Providers (CSPs) and Value Added Service Providers (VASPs) are investigating opportunities to provide differentiated Service Quality related Service Layer Agreements (SLAs) to their customers. The services provided will span several administrative domains which makes their management complex. The key element for end users when choosing a particular service is the guarantee of support to be provided when using the service and the desire to interact with as few actors as possible. On the other hand, key issues for network operators and service providers are the cost-effective maintenance of equipment and services. The aim of this paper is to present a novel architecture that provides the necessary infrastructure, models and mechanisms to help VASPs and CSPs to rapidly introduce customer care services for user quality assurance in a Multi-Domain environment. The architecture aims at integrating TINA, TMF and TMN concepts as well as established legacy in-house customer care and help desk systems. This work is being undertaken within the Assurance part of the CEC ACTS project FlowThru. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demand for a great variety of sophisticated telecommunications services with multimedia characteristics is increasing. This trend highlights the need for the efficient creation of distributed programs with multimedia data exchanges over distributed processing environments. Therefore, it is necessary to support the object-oriented development of distributed multimedia applications in a flexible manner. This paper recognises Microsoft's Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) as a key potential technology in the area of service engineering and examines a structured approach to enhance it for the handling of continuous media streams through the design and implementation of a collection of suitable multimedia support services. The proposed approach focuses on the modelling of continuous media communications in DCOM and is validated through the design and implementation of a multimedia conferencing service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile Agent technology forms today the basis for the realisation of many innovative and flexible telecommunication architectures. After its emerging application in telecommunications management, intelligent networking and mobile communications, the increasing adoption of internet technologies in the telco environment suggests a new promising application domain: Voice over IP environments. This paper presents a mobile agent based VoIP service provision architecture. This architecture is based on the integration of the Grasshopper agent platform, a state of the art mobile agent platform which has been developed for the implementation of advanced telecommunication service environments, and an IETF based VoIP protocol suite, i.e., the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and related IETF protocols. The outlined architecture, in which most of the SIP entities are realised by mobile agents enables a more flexible and distributed realisation of VoIP services providing better load balancing, and particularly user mo bility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose an integrated proactive routing and mobility management strategy that makes feasible the realization of a flat single-tier routing architecture in multihop packet radio networks. The integration of the routing and mobility management functions is achieved via the use of the geographic position reporting mechanism and the generalization of the zone routing concept. The underlying principle behind the proposed routing strategy is to reduce the network routing overhead by making the accuracy of the routing information in each node "inversely proportional" to its distance from any other node in the network. The proposed integrated scheme provides for a flat routing architecture with no hierarchical entry/exit points, where every node can act as a router, therefore increasing the network's routing flexibility and robustness. Finally we show through modeling and simulation that the proposed routing protocol is a bandwidth-efficient routing mechanism that can be applied across large-scale networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since ATM switches are intented to be simple and inexpensive, a significant part of the network cost is in the cost of the links. A way of increasing the traffic we can send over these expensive links is to transmit compressed ATM cells. This idea, although it seems very simple, is a new one for ATM and as we show it can signicantly increase the useful bandwidth of a typical ATM network. In this paper the CAC algorithm that can be effectively used in a network which uses this compression scheme is also described and the results that can be achieved when this algorithm is used in a real network are presented. This CAC algorithm is based on Large Deviation Theory: the large deviation rate-function (entropy) of compressed (and thus more bursty) ATM traffic can be estimated from measurements of trffic activity. The entropy can be used to determine the bandwidth requirement of the traffic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines load balancing issues relating to a distributed CORBA-based Service Control Point. Two types of load balancing strategies are explored through simulation studies: (i) A novel ant-based load balancing algorithm, which has been devised specifically for this type of system. This algorithm is compared to more traditional algorithms, (ii) A method for optimal distribution of the computational objects composing the service programs. This is based on mathematically minimising the expected communication flows between network nodes and message-level processing costs. The simulation model has been based on the recently adopted OMG IN/CORBA Interworking specification and the TINA Service Session computational object model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the management of public telecommunication networks TMN (Telecommunications Management Network) receives a wide acceptance from network operators and suppliers. Although TMN defines different layers going from the service oriented Business layer towards the Element layer, it is currently very much focused on network and element management. On the other hand TINA (Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture) integrates the service management layers with the network management layers in a coherent way relying on a distributed software execution platform (DPE). This paper focuses on possible interworking schemes between both architectures where the strong elements of each are combined: TINA for the service management and TMN for the network management. Several candidate interworking/ migration schemes between CORBA/IDL and CMISE/GDMO are investigated in the context of a concrete implementation, namely the interworking between a TMN platform based on HP OpenView and the TINA compliant platform developed in the context of the ACTS VITAL project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents solutions developed in the ACTS ASPeCT project for advanced security features in UMTS. In particular, a secure billing scheme for value-added information services using micropayments is presented. The solutions will be validated in a trial to be conducted over an experimental UMTS platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into Artificial Intelligence, and specifically Distributed AI has identified agent technology as offering a key role in future systems. The technology does not discriminate by application area, and is equally applicable to wrapping legacy technologies and systems as it is to implementing new systems. The Intelligent Systems Group at Broadcom éireann Research Ltd. has been investigating the suitability of Intelligent Agents (IAs) as an enabling technology for a unifying approach to network and service management systems. Such an approach should support network management, service management and service delivery in a seamless manner, to best satisfy an operator's business needs. This paper catalogues the work done into the use of IA technologies within each of these management areas and on the integration of software components and legacy systems. This work has employed an open, distributed, language-independent multi-agent platform known as the Agent Services Layer (ASL), which was developed by Broadcom éireann Research's Intelligent Systems Group. The architecture of this platform and experiences gained on its application to the above mentioned problem domains are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of switched virtual connections and valueadded services in ATM networks create new conditions for network management. A general model for performance management in switched broadband networks, based on interaction between management functions and control functions, is presented in this paper. Quality-of-service management in the service domain is also considered. Finally, in-service methods for monitoring of network performance (especially cell losses) in switched ATM networks are covered in more detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the DOLMEN project, a methodology for service development on distributed systems has been established. The methodology emphasises the specification, validation, implementation, and testing stages, starting from the OSAM Component Model and targeting to a CORBA platform. Guidelines are provided for object specification and implementation, with the introduction of a ‘capsule structure' that enables multiple instantiations of the same object. The utilisation of SDL allows behaviour validation and generation of ‘cases' for implementation testing. This methodology has been applied in the development of TINA Session Models, with the mobility extensions defined by DOLMEN. The paper presents a concrete example regarding the Access Session. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports work carried out in the context of the ACTS AVANTI AC042 project, addressing the issue of providing accessibility and high quality interaction in Web-based multimedia applications and services, to people with disabilities. The work presented concerns the design and development of a user interface component, which employs adaptability and adaptivity techniques to tailor itself to the abilities, skills, requirements and preferences of individual users, the different contexts of use, and the changing characteristics of run-time interaction between the user and the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an approach that introduces the formal Specification and Description Language (SDL) in the development of TMN applications. Based on the application development phases „analysis", „design", „implementation" it will be outlined which particular specifics of TMN applications have to be taken into account and how SDL can be used to ease the development of TMN based management systems. The presented approach supports system development by using object oriented analysis and SDL'92 design together in a coherent way: OMT (Object Modeling Technique by Rumbough) is used for system analysis and SDL'92 for system design. Due to the formal nature of SDL a thorough specification of the system behavior can be performed and implementations can be semiautomatically generated from this specification. Commercially available tools already support simulation, validation and code generation for SDL systems. The described methodology is applied for the development of prototype management applications in the ACTS project MOON. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the definition of different Service Levels for Electronic Brokerage Applications. This document is structured in three parts. The first one gives an overview of concepts such as Electronic commerce, Brokerage, Multimedia applications and Quality of service, including the definition of Service levels for different Electronic brokerage applications. The second part presents the specification of all the facilities supported by the different Service levels defined in the first part. The third part presents the MULTIMEDIATOR system, as a case study of Electronic brokerage application, in which the different Service levels are identified. The main conclusions are that four different Service levels reflecting different levels of user requirements can be defined: for Searching brokerage, Products brokerage, Services brokerage and Complex brokerage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the ANTS (ATM Networking Transactional Society) architecture, the result of a study into the application of transactional semantics in ATM, performed by Sintef Telecom & Informatics in the ACTS project ACTranS. With a centralised approach like the one taken in TINA-C, we see a scalability problem in the inherent bottlenecks of this architecture. To address this, we have defined and described a society of cooperating agents, ANTS, with each agent governing an ATM switch. The distributed agents share among them the control of the network, delivering a scalable and flexible architecture as a basis for connection management and intelligent network services. While the introduction of distributed agents alone offer a mean to introduce services in the network, using transactions to define units of work and keep a consistent picture of the world further facilitates releasing their potential. But, while our evaluation concludes that transactions offer some conceptual relief in connection management, the transactional agent society would better serve as a useful platform for higher level services like user profiles and accounting, seamless networks and Virtual Private Networks. OMG's OTS can mostly take care of the transactional mechanisms, but we see the need for a minimalised, relaxed variant to serve its purpose in the connection management. While the concepts seem promising, a software implementation would in reality be too slow to handle the traffic. Due to the relatively high latency in CORBA and OTS, the transactional aspects will face performance trouble in the connection management, but used in higher level services we see immediate gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can network Management benefit from the use of Distributed Transaction Processing in terms of fault tolerance, application development efficiency, data and resources integrity/consistency. If so, what is the foreseen impact on performances? Experiments and results, both in technology developments and in trials within the ACTS Domain 5 projects lead to significant results which are discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and discusses the ReTINA approach to distributed object-based middleware. It is based on a minimal but highly flexible framework for the construction of Object Request Brokers (ORBs). The ReTINA ORB framework supports the introduction of arbitrary binding mechanisms, including arbitrary communication protocols and communication stacks, and fine-grained control of system-level resources. This makes up for a highly scalable ORB ("from mobile phone to mainframe") which supports the development of applications with temporal quality of service constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agent technology promises to increase the flexibility and power of telecommunications management systems and services. This paper describes ongoing work that, through prototyping and experimentation, is aiming to understand the practical implications and benefits of applying agent technology to network and service management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today distributed object technology / middleware, such as OMG's Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), has gained considerable acceptance in the telecommunication systems. In addition, mobile agent technology is currently gaining momentum in the telecommunication domain, too. The recent OMG work on a Mobile Agent System Interoperability Facility (MASIF) specification can be regarded as a milestone on the road toward a unified distributed mobile object middleware, which enables technology and location transparent interactions between static and mobile objects. This paper illustrates what basic functionality is covered by today's mobile agent platforms, what functionality is covered by the MASIF, and particularly what additional functionality has to be provided by the application designer, in order to make use of a mobile agent platform for specific telecom applications. As an example we illustrate this by the usage of a state of the art commercial mobile agent platform, Grasshopper developed by GMD FOKUS and IKV++, in the context of Intelligent Networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current Web has more or less reached its limits. There are serious problems in performance as well as in finding desired pieces of information. In this paper we examine ways how TINA concepts can be used in provision of the Web services on OSAM platform developed in the DOLMEN project. We present two different scenarios. In the first one the focus is on how to exploit TINA concepts when standard Web servers in the Internet are accessed. In the second one the focus is on how a Hypermedia Information Browsing application should be arranged in a TINA environment. The first one starts the evolution towards a properly engineered and well managed provision of information services. The approaches are called the gateway approach and the full OSAM approach. The gateway approach provides an end-user on TINA terminal an access to Web servers in the TCP/IP Internet. The full OSAM approach outlines how enhanced information browsing services can be deployed on a TINA platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the latest developments in the TINA Service Architecture with respect to service provisioning performed by two or more independent business entities. In other words, service level federation and the underlying rationale, concepts and principles are explained and exemplified by scenarios. The mapping to inter-domain reference points and the present status and expected developments in the newly created TINA work groups are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]