Intelligent Network Service Configurator Tool

Can the Customers required Value Added Services be implemented upon the Intelligent Network ?

The Intelligent Network Service Configurator (INSC) Tool is used in the GSAC DSS which takes the technical specification of a service (e.g., communication, processing and usage requirements) and suggests the most appropriate network and service resource assignments (configurations) to support the service.

The INSC aids the GSAC user in determining whether customers requirements for Value Added services can be implemented upon the Service Providers Intelligent Network (IN). The criterion used to decide whether it can be implemented upon the network is the delays experienced by the service and by other services sharing the same resources. In particular the delays as perceived by the service user (i.e. the delays between a user action and a network reaction) are considered. The INSC only considers the processing of the Value Added aspects of the service, it does not consider the transport aspects of the service as these are handled by other GSAC tools.

Figure 1 - Architecture of Intelligent Network.

The processing of an IN service may be distributed across several functionally and physically separate resources. For example a service involving user interaction might have many cycles of interactions between the user, Service Switching Point (SSP), Service Control Point (SCP), Service Data Point (SDP) and Intelligent Peripheral (IP). The overall delay as experienced by the service user will be the sum of the delays experienced at each resource.

Decisions to be Supported.

The IN tool supports the user in :

• determining where the customer accesses the IN ( Choosing the SSP to connect the customer to). and
• where implementing the requirements causes a problem with the service or other services sharing the same resources, attempting to rectify that problem.

The input to the INSC is a set of technical requirements in the form of Supplementary Service ACE^*s which describe the Value Added aspects of the service required. The output of the INSC is a configuration of IN resources which meets the customers requirements without impinging upon the behaviour of the network.

Functional Breakdown

The INSC can be broken into three steps which must be undertaken (see figure 2):

1. Determine new load offered to Network by the new service and determine where to add the load to the network.

2. Find the mean delays experienced by the service and all services sharing the same resources and determine if delays are within acceptable bounds.

3. When delays are too great improve performance of service by :

• adding new resources to the network,
• reconfiguring existing resources, or
• manipulating the loads upon the resources concerned.

Figure 2 - Steps taken in INSC tool.

The INSC tool contains a mixture of OR and KBS techniques. The KBS technique used is a forward chaining rule base which performs the mapping from technical requirements to offered load and also determines if delays experienced by services are within acceptable levels. The OR technique used is a queueing approximation method called the decomposition method from which the mean response times of network resources can be computed. The INSC is coded in Common LISP, C and the KnowledgeWorks rule base language.

(Note * : Abstract Commmunication Entity)