QoS-Enabled Information Transport: Yet Another Operator Service

Abstract

IMS and other service platforms embrace the current trend of respecting the Internet paradigm of transport and application layers separation, yet building interfaces between both domains. We push forward this concept and consider "information transport" as any other service. By information transport service we refer to the task of making the information flow from one end of the network to the other. Descriptive factors of this service are the possible Quality of Service (QoS) warranties (e.g.bandwidth) and the tariffs, not necessarily exposed to the end user, but yes impacting the commercial parameters. AAA (Authentication, Authorization and Accounting) and composition systems in Service Platforms will then deal with "information transport" as with any other (billable) service like downloading an mp3 song. One of the main advantages is the widened applicability. Existing service management and composition techniques could be employed resulting on increased flexibility, new business possibilities and a better end service. We also discuss a Next Generation Network (NGN) architecture illustrating our approach.