Experiences on the Establishment and Provisioning of NGN/IMS Testbeds - The FOKUS Open IMS Playground and the Related Open Source IMS Core

In this paper we share our experiences on establishing, running, and extending a Next Generation Network (NGN) and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) testbed. The testbed has been designed based on the layered architecture of NGNs and aims at satisfying Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry requirements for open and flexible testing infrastructures. In the center of this telecommunication technology oriented testbed an open source IMS project has been established for the benefit of the IMS research community. Throughout the paper we will give insights into the structure of the NGN/IMS testing environment and the associated open source developments. It will be described how operators, vendors, and the academia can benefit from the open NGN/IMS testbed solution and how this infrastructure helped in the development of IMS test tools and standardization. Furthermore, an approach to current challenges such as NGN/IMS management and service orchestration will be outlined in face of Service Oriented Architecture strategies.