Tutorial 1: Accounting, Charging, and Billing Technologies and Standards for NGN

Taesang Choi (ETRI, Korea)

Abstract : For PSTN services, telecommunication service providers have developed a relatively sophisticated and stable set of mechanisms for undertaking cost distribution across multiple providers including customers. The charging arrangement model mostly used is bilateral settlement based on the customers’ call-minutes. In the case of the current Internet, however, charging arrangement between a customer and a provider is mostly flat-rate. Charging arrangement between providers is either peering or transit models depending on the bilateral architectural relationship.

NGN is a network of IP-based converged networks. Unlike the current Internet, it is divided into transport and service stratum for efficient control and management of user, service, and transport traffic. It also differentiates traffic and treats them with different levels of qualities. Thus, various NG services are no longer simple enough to account, charge, and bill based on the current methodology and charging models. Extension in terms of both technology and its associated standards is required. This tutorial addresses complexity of accounting, charging, and billing for NGN and provides possible solutions in terms of requirements, architecture, protocols, and scenarios which are under work by various SDOs and research, academia, and industry communities.
 

LEVEL: Introductory to Intermediate

Tutorial 2:IP Converged Network and FMBC Services

Hiroki Horiuchi (KDDI R&D Laboratories Inc., Japan)

Abstract : IP convergence is one of mega trends in telecommunication operators. They introduce IP-based core networks and converged services like Triple play, where voice, TV and Internet services can be offered to consumers. Furthermore, they try to develop advanced service applications by converging fixed, mobile communications and broadcasting (the so-called Fixed Mobile Broadcast Convergence, or FMBC for short). The development of IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem)/MMD(Multi-Media Domain) and NGN(Next Generation Network) technologies and standards has largely contributed to the migration in the telecommunications industry.

As one initiative to achieve this goal, telecommunication operators have come up with future infrastructure concepts based on such as the 4G mobile and NGN technologies. This tutorial presents trend of telecommunication business and technology for IP converged network, including a case study of FMC services and technologies toward future FMBC services. Furthermore, challenges for operations and management in such a converged network are studied in this session.

LEVEL: Introductory to Intermediate  

Tutorial 3: Network Performance Perception in the Framework of NGN

Marat Zhanikeev (Waseda University, Japan)

Abstract : NGN strives to deliver various services existing in separate planes today over an all-IP network, i.e. using packet-switching only. In such a network, various contents, such as video, voice, and text will have to coexist regardless of differences in QoS requirements made by each of them separately. NGN deals with this boost in complexity by separating control from the transport plane. Services will be defined and delivered at the control plane while transport layer will be used for transport only.

Currently, ITU defines 6 distinct QoS classes for IP networks in Y.1541 recommendation based basic network characteristics, such as mean and statistical upper bound of transfer delay and packet loss, etc. These characteristics, however, define only the transport network, while application QoS requirements defined in G.1010 prove to be much richer and require a non-trivial mapping to be performed between these two definitions of QoS.

Since the above deals with the general area of network performance, it is important to define network performance based on various ways existing today to perceive it through passive and active measurement. This tutorial discusses passive measurements based on RMON MIBs and active measurements targeting end-to-end performance metrics defined by IETF IPPM in the framework of heterogenous services of NGN.
 

LEVEL: Advanced

Tutorial 4: Management for QoS-guaranteed Real-time Multimedia Service Provisioning in MIH (Media Independent Handover) Environment

Young-Tak Kim (Yeungnam Univ., Korea)

Abstract : Seamless mobile communication for realtime multimedia telephony and teleconference are strongly required across multiple wireless communication networks, such as IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN, 802.16 Wireless MAN, and Cellular Telephone network. Each wireless network has different access mechanism and available bandwidth. IEEE 802.21 MIH (Media Independent Handover) has been developed to enable vertical handover and interoperability among heterogeneous wireless networks.

In order to provide QoS-guaranteed seamless mobile realtime multimedia service across heterogeneous wireless networks, the available network resource should be checked and negotiated before the vertical handoff considering the required network resource for the multimedia service. When the available network resource is unequal (i.e., the available bandwidth is increased or decreased), the end-to-end negotiation among end systems for possible adjustments in encoding and decoding of multimedia streams.

In this tutorial, the management issues of the QoS-guaranteed, seamless mobile multimedia service provisioning are studied. Firstly, it provides overview of the architecture and operation of MIH. SIP-based end-to-end QoS negotiation scheme for vertical handover is explained. The distributed management architecture for inter-AS traffic engineering for QoS-guaranteed seamless mobile multimedia service provisioning is explained.

Recommended Audience includes wireless network architects, operations managers and staffs, and researchers in the area of high-speed wireless telecommunications for QoS-guaranteed seamless mobile services.

LEVEL: intermediate