Industry Focuses on Ensuring Interoperability for IMS, VoIP Apps

Interoperability is kind of like basic stretching. It’s not exciting, but without it, you can find yourself in a world of hurt.

That’s why so much of what we’re hearing out of the VoIP industry is centered around interoperability, much of it tied in with IMS.

For example, Telcordia Technologies announced at VON earlier this month that it is partnering with various equipment and software providers that will pre-integrate their products with the Telcordia Service Interconnection Registry, a centralized registry of routing data service providers can use to interconnect with one another.

Service border controller companies Acme Packet and NexTone, as well as NetNumber and Nominum, are the first suppliers to join this Telcordia Service Interconnection Community.

“Interconnection is one thing driving the industry, interconnection and interoperability,” said Gary Richemaker, chief architect of interconnection solutions at Telcordia.

That’s why Telcordia at a VON show in 2005 introduced the VoIP routing registry, extending the company’s PSTN LERG (local exchange routing guide) to IP networks.

But Richemaker says the physical interconnection piece was missing, so Telcordia introduced the interconnection community; it will test and verify members’ interoperability with the Telcordia registry so service providers that use the registry don’t have to undertake that task. That testing usually takes just three days, he says.

On a separate front, but also at VON, the MultiService Forum (MSF) announced it will dedicate 2007 to expand-ing its Global MSF Interoperability program to extend the MSF architecture to embrace Web services, create a unified approach to QoS, develop fully specified NNI interconnection points, create specs for resilience to over-load in highly distributed and dynamic next-gen networking implementations, and initiate an industry certification program.

The MSF would also like to see a permanent UNH-IOL testbed for IMS, which it expects to launch in October.

As for the certification program, that will focus first on SIP Interconnect, with a pilot on that planned for in the United Kingdom. QoS will be another early focus of the certification program, with a pilot to launch in April. An MSF spokesman says following the certification, service provider RFPs are likely to require this certification.

The IMS Forum is focusing on some of the same themes.

In January, IMS Forum oversaw the first plugfest for IMS, a much-awaited milestone for the standards-based technology. The interoperability testing will continue into 2008, with an ambitious goal of certifying that services and applications will interoperate reliably across the multiplatform, multivendor architecture that is IMS.

“IMS is fundamentally a network architecture, a better way to support multimedia consumer and enterprise appli-cations,” says Manuel Vexler, vice president of the IMS Forum, “but ensuring that a generic architecture will support these services is a challenge since a lot of those applications haven’t yet been created. But we want to do just that with IMS, in order to open up cable, phone, wireless networks to any kind of service.”

Thus, the focus for the plugfest process is squarely on maximizing the quality of converged VoIP, video, broad-band Internet, messaging and wireless services across all kinds of infrastructure. The idea is that no matter which vendor is providing the components, or which operator network is carrying the traffic, the service will work, and work well.

And so, January’s event, held at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL) in Durham, N.H., combined 15 carrier-grade platforms to create a network capable of supporting 250,000 subscribers. Using dual-mode mobile phones and a number of VoIP, Wi-Fi and other user equipment simulators, participants demon-strated a variety of voice services and applications – including fixed-mobile convergence services, IP Centrex and PSTN gateway interoperability — over a multivendor IMS architecture. “With this first IMS plugfest, we have validated a multivendor configuration, and have built a reference test network which will be used to build services like the quad-play on top,” says Vexler.

The plugfest also identified areas for additional development in multivendor 3GPP IMS Release 6 networks, tested multidomain VoIP calls, and integrated SIP application servers with multiple IMS cores and the Home Subscriber Server serviced by DIAMETER interfaces. Attendees included Ditech Networks, Empirix Inc., Ixia, NE Technologies Inc., Reef Point Systems Inc., Sonus Networks Inc., Starent Networks Corp., Tekelec, Tek-tronix Inc. and Valid8.com Inc., and was sponsored by Ditech, Empirix, GlobalTouch Telecom, Sonus Networks, Trendium Inc. and VoX Communications Corp.

A second IMS plugfest is planned for the end of the second quarter. This event will build upon established methodologies and reference environments from the first plugfest, and will feature applications-specific tests for the triple and quadruple play over mobile, cable and fixed networks. VoIP in particular will be a focus, but the IMS Forum also will concentrate on certifying the port-ability of services across access networks.

“Most convergence and standardization work today is in the wireless and CableLabs arena, and partly in TISPAN (Telecoms & Internet converged Services & Protocols for Advanced Networks) for fixed networks,” says Vexler. “To us, this is not pushing IMS far enough, because at the end of the day, consumers and enterprises will not care whose broadband you’re using. It will be about pricing, bundling, convenience — not technology. The wall be-tween business and consumer is disappearing, and three-screen approaches are rolling out. In the age of content and ringtones, subscribers no longer have the loyalty to the operator they once did. So we need an IMS approach that is media-independent.”

And infrastructure vendor-independent, too. “We are not really validating the architecture as much as the ability to support multiple vendors and pieces,” says Vexler. “Service providers can’t afford to wait for one vendor to deliver all the components of a network, and will be working with other service providers to enable cross-network services, who may have other vendors in their networks. So the market will be open, competitive and fast-moving, and operators need to understand that.”

Acme Packet www.www.acmepacket.com  

IMS Forum www.imsforum.org  

MSF www.msforum.org  

NetNumber www.netnumber.com  

NexTone www.nextone.com  

Nominum www.nominum.com  

Telcordia Technologies www.telcordia.com  

University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory www.iol.unh.edu

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