What Is the Place for User-network Signalling in the 21 Century?

In the provision of multiservice network services, much attention has been focused on the use of usernetwork (UN) signalling. UN signalling plays an important role in connection-oriented networks. In such networks, it can be used for admission control, providing resource allocation (resource reservation), enabling new services, accounting information (for generating bills) as well as allow collection of statistics that can aid in dimensioning and capacity planning. We argue that UN signalling is not required for IP-based networks and that; a) for an IP-based network other mechanisms may be more suitable for providing the features listed above; b) to insist that there is UN signalling in IP-based networks that reproduces the signalling mechanisms already used in the telco-network can hinder the deployment of new applications in IP-based networks.