Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence Contents

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106 JOURNAL OF EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES IN WEB INTELLIGENCE, VOL. 2, NO. 2, MAY 2010Broadband Integrated Services over ProposedOpen CPE ArchitectureKushal RoyPrincipal Investigator to DST Government of India and faculty,Department of Electronics and Communication EngineeringHaldia Institute of Technology, ICARE Complex, PO H.I.T HaldiaPIN- 721657, West Bengal, IndiaEmail: profkushalroy@hotmail.comAbstract— Over the decades, due to technology limitationsand regulatory restrictions, information services have beendelivered to subscribers through multiple service providers.In recent years, however, the advancement of digitalcommunication technology, the passing of the 1996Telecommunications Act in the U.S., and the emergence ofthe Internet are driving network convergence. As a result,the industry is calling for the consolidation of an integratedCustomer Premises Equipment (CPE) in the customer’spremises to provide integrated services, such as multimedia,voice, and data services. However, the ever-changingnetwork standards and competing technologies not onlyconfuse carriers, but also prevent them from committing tomassive CPE deployment.In this paper, the problems carriers face in the deploymentof integrated services over broadband are first described. Inorder to remove these deployment obstacles, and also tocreate new value-added services, service models areinvestigated and an open CPE architecture is proposed thatwill support the wide range of broadband accesstechnologies and ever-changing network standards.Index Terms—Integrated Services, Broadband, VoIP, PSN,SoftSwitch Model.I. INTRODUCTIONThe convergence of voice and Internet data trafficalso calls for new Customer Premises Equipment (CPE)such as Digital Subscriber Lines (DSLs), modems, cablemodems, and wireless modems that provide users withbroadband access to the Internet. However, instead ofadding new CPE to the home, the industry is movingtowards consolidating CPE into an Integrated CPE (I-CPE) to help lower the cost, reduce network managementcomplexities, and improve the efficiency of networkresources. The I-CPE is also called an Integrated AccessDevice (IAD) and a Residential Gateway (RG) whenused in residential areas. In this paper, the term I-CPE isused, because I-CPE is intended to serve multiple marketsegments including residential, Small Office HomeOffice (SOHO), and small businesses to provideintegrated services such as voice, multi-media, andInternet access.While the upgrade of the network infrastructure iswell underway, the deployment of I-CPE remains a bigobstacle to the delivery of integrated services overbroadband due to the volume and time that are requiredfor the deployment. It was believed that the lack of autoconfigurationwas the main roadblock to massive I-CPEdeployment. However, the largest obstacle today is not somuch how to deploy I-CPE but rather, which type of I-CPE the carriers should be deploying, because thistelecommunication world is filled with too manystandards, e.g., Media Gateway Control Protocol(MGCP), H.248 [7], H.323, Session Initiation Protocol(SIP), Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Voice overATM (VoATM), etc.; and competing technologies, e.g.,DSL, Cable, Wireless, Fiber, Ethernet, HomeRF ∗ , IEEE802.11, Bluetooth, etc. As a result, carriers are facinggreat difficulties in choosing an I-CPE for deploymentbecause they fear it being replaced in the near future.II. THE NEXT-GENERATION NETWORKINFRASTRUCTUREUnlike the dial-up modem, the introduction of I-CPEwill require major upgrades in the infrastructure of theexisting network. The new network is intended to supportthe convergence of the voice-centric Public SwitchedTelephone Network (PSTN) and the Internet, and it iscommonly referred as the Next-Generation Network(NGN). The NGN is based on the distributed Softswitcharchitecture in which the call control is separated fromthe media transport. Figure 1 shows the role of I-CPE inthe NGN infrastructure. It indicates that an I-CPE is theportal to a customer’s premises and it acts as the gatewayto interconnect the Local Area Network (LAN) with theWide Area Network (WAN), which consist of the AccessNetwork and the Core Network [6]. The Access Network,consisting of Access Nodes, Regional BroadbandNetworks, Transit Gateways, and Because of the passingof the Telecommunications Act in 1996 and the FCC’songoing adventures in local loop deregulation,companies, including Inter-eXchange Carriers (IXC),Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILEC), CompetitiveLocal Exchange Carriers (CLEC), CATV serviceproviders, and many other emerging service providers,are all eager to enter this lucrative broadband accessbusiness. Therefore, it is certain that I-CPE will supportvarious broadband interfaces, such as wireless, cable,xDSL, and fiber optics, to target different market sectorsdepending on price, performance, environment, or thetype of users. Then, the recent advancement of IEEE© 2010 ACADEMY PUBLISHERdoi:10.4304/jetwi.2.2.106-109
JOURNAL OF EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES IN WEB INTELLIGENCE, VOL. 2, NO. 2, MAY 2010 10780.3ae 10 GigE standard [13] enables the Ethernet towork beyond the LAN. Thus, an I-CPE may also supportEthernet broadband interface to the WAN. Access Nodesterminate the broadband interfaces from I-CPE andaggregate multiple CPE traffic to the RegionalBroadband Networks. Regional Broadband Networksprovide transport and switching functions among AccessNodes and Transit Gateways. Transit Gateways mayconsist of Trunking Gateways and Signaling Gatewaysthat perform signaling and bearer interworking functionsbetween Regional Broadband Networks and PSN/CSN.An MGC is also referred to as the Call Manager orSoftswitch that typically runs call control software in aserver to provide call-processing functions. In thedistributed Softswitch architecture, the value-addedservices or applications can reside in an ApplicationServer. A Media Server is controlled by the Softswitch toplay tonal announcements or perform media streamingfunctions, such as Interactive Voice Response (IVR) andConference Bridge. The media streaming is carried inbearer connections between the Access Node and theTransit Gateway for on-net calls, or between AccessNodes for off-net calls, while call control functions areprovided by an MGC. GigaPoP (i.e., Point of Presence)aggregates the traffic from Ethernet CPE to PSN [14]. Itshould be noted that the NGN architecture shown aboveis meant to be logical, so the Access Nodes, TransitGateways, Media Server, Application Server, and MGCare logical functional blocks which may be implementedas stand-alone devices or embedded in other networkelements.The Media Gateway Controller (MGC), provides theramp to Packet-Switched Networks (PSN) and Circuit-Switched Networks (CSN).Figure 1: Next-Generation Network infrastructureIII OPEN CPE ARCHITECTUREBroadband access is, for many, the solution to the“World Wide Wait” problem (slow Web performance),and it would also enable the creation of many newservices that promise enormous benefits to subscribersand service providers. However, service providers arefacing many challenges during the deployment ofbroadband access networks, not least of which is how todeploy the greatest number of Customer PremisesEquipment (CPE) in the timeliest manner..A. I-CPE CharacteristicsThe following characteristics of the IntegratedCustomer Premises Equipment (I-CPE) architecture areimportant to the resolution of these deployment problems.• Open Architecture–In the past several decades,open architecture has become the trend in theindustry. It started with the computer industry inthe early 80s, and it gradually spread to thetelecommunication industry, where the monolithiccentral office switch is under great pressure fromthe Internet telephony to open up. The broadbandCPE industry will not buck this trend sinceopenness will only foster new services and productcompetition, which, in turn, will lower CPE cost,reduce time-to-market, and inspire innovation [3].• Flexibility–The ever-changing network standardsand infrastructures, the wide range of accessnetwork technologies, and the uncertainty ofwhich value-added service will emerge in thefuture make it very difficult to have a fit-it-all CPEarchitecture. Thus, the I-CPE should be flexible tocontain the must-have core features needed tosupport today’s services, yet it should still be ableto accommodate future upgrades. Flexiblearchitecture will lower CPE costs, something thatis crucial to I-CPE being accepted in the costsensitiveconsumer market. For example, an I-CPEmight be designed to provide home automationand security services, but the interface standardsas well as the functionalities to control homeappliances have yet to be defined. The flexiblearchitecture needs to be able to accommodate aBluetooth wireless modem plug-in and thenecessary software that will need to be added tothe CPE to support this feature when the standardand technology become available.• Value-Added Services - Each time a new serviceor technology is introduced, it needs to beperceived by the public as adding value in orderthat it will be bought and used. Due to thecompetition from Internet telephony, the cost oftoll telephony services is continually decreasing.Soon, it is believed, you will be charged a flatmonthly rate for telephone services instead ofbeing billed on a per-minute basis. Therefore, thedriver for the Next-Generation Network (NGN) isnot about inventing a new way to provide existingservices, but focusing on value-added servicessuch as Presence, Voice Web, Voice Portal,Unified Messaging, and Voice Virtual PrivateNetwork (VPN), which hold great potential forgenerating additional revenue for serviceproviders.© 2010 ACADEMY PUBLISHER
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