Broadband Network Architectures: Two Approaches

To support a wide range of multimedia services future fixed and wireless broadband network capabilities should allow the distribution of service functions between the customer terminals and the network nodes. Intelligent Networks (IN) can be considered as the bridging technology between the customer based service management and the service execution in the networks. Considering the mobile and broadband technologies it is a natural question, how the concept of intelligence will develop. To satisfy multimedia service needs future broadband networks should support distributed operations for easy service creation and deployment. In this paper we describe two approaches studied in the Telecommunications Software and Multimedia Laboratory of Helsinki University of Technology.