Plug and Play

Industry Focuses on Ensuring Interoperability for IMS, VoIP Apps

“I have a colleague that says once things start getting boring you know that people are starting to make money at it,” says Brett Azuma, executive vice president of Ovum-RHK. That’s the case now with VoIP, according to Azuma, who says that translates into rather pedestrian topics of discussion in the VoIP world lately. One such topic is interoperability, which individual vendors and industry groups are addressing in various ways.

The IMS Forum’s Manuel Vexler

For example, the IMS Forum in January oversaw the first plugfest for IMS, a much-awaited milestone for the standards-based technology. The interoperability testing will continue into 2008, with an ambitious goal of certifying that services and applications will interoperate reliably across the multiplatform, multivendor architecture that is IMS.

“IMS is fundamentally a network architecture, a better way to support multimedia consumer and enterprise applications,” says Manuel Vexler, vice president of the IMS Forum, “but ensuring that a generic architecture will support these services is a challenge since a lot of those applications haven’t yet been created. But we want to do just that with IMS, in order to open up cable, phone, wireless networks to any kind of service.”

Thus, the focus for the plugfest process is squarely on maximizing the quality of converged VoIP, video, broadband Internet, messaging and wireless services across all kinds of infrastructure. The idea is that no matter which vendor is providing the components, or which operator network is carrying the traffic, the service will work, and work well.

And so, January’s event, held at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL) in Durham, N.H., combined 15 carrier-grade platforms to create a network capable of supporting 250,000 subscribers. Using dual-mode mobile phones and a number of VoIP, Wi-Fi and other user equipment simulators, participants demonstrated a variety of voice services and applications — including fixed/mobile convergence services, IP Centrex and PSTN gateway interoperability — over a multivendor IMS architecture. “With this first IMS plugfest, we have validated a multivendor configuration, and have built a reference test network which will be used to build services like the quad-play on top,” says Vexler.

The plugfest also identified areas for additional development in multivendor 3GPP IMS Release 6 networks, tested multidomain VoIP calls, and integrated SIP application servers with multiple IMS cores and the Home Subscriber Server serviced by DIAMETER interfaces. Attendees included Ditech Networks, Empirix Inc., Ixia, NE Technologies Inc., Reef Point Systems Inc., Sonus Networks Inc., Starent Networks Corp., Tekelec, Tektronix Inc. and Valid8.com Inc., and was sponsored by Ditech, Empirix, GlobalTouch Telecom, Sonus Networks, Trendium Inc. and VoX Communications Corp.

A second IMS plugfest is planned for the end of this quarter. This event will build upon established methodologies and reference environments from the first plugfest, and will feature applications-specific tests for the triple and quadruple play over mobile, cable and fixed networks. VoIP, in particular, will be a focus, but the IMS Forum also will concentrate on certifying the portability of services across access networks.

“Most convergence and standardization work today is in the wireless and CableLabs arena, and partly in TISPAN (Telecoms & Internet converged Services & Protocols for Advanced Networks) for fixed networks,” says Vexler. “To us, this is not pushing IMS far enough, because at the end of the day, consumers and enterprises will not care whose broadband you’re using. It will be about pricing, bundling, convenience — not technology. The wall between business and consumer is disappearing, and three-screen approaches are rolling out. In the age of content and ringtones, subscribers no longer have the loyalty to the operator they once did. So we need an IMS approach that is media-independent.”

And infrastructure vendor-independent, too. “We are not really validating the architecture as much as the ability to support multiple vendors and pieces,” says Vexler. “Service providers can’t afford to wait for one vendor to deliver all the components of a network, and will be working with other service providers to enable cross-network services, who may have other vendors in their networks. So the market will be open, competitive and fast-moving, and operators need to understand that.”

The MultiService Forum also continues its focus of ensuring IMS interoperability. Key areas of focus by MSF this year include expanding its Global MSF Interoperability program to extend the MSF architecture to embrace Web services, create a unified approach to QoS, develop fully specified NNI interconnection points, create specs for resilience to overload in highly distributed and dynamic next-gen networking implementations, and initiate an industry certification program. The MSF also would like to see a permanent UNH-IOL test-bed for IMS, which it expects to launch in October. As for the certification program, that will focus first on SIP Interconnect, with a pilot on that planned for the U.K. QoS will be another early focus of the certification program, with a pilot to launch in April.

And just this spring, RADVISION announced the formation of a new activity group by the International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium called the IMTC IMS. This group promotes and facilitates the development and implementation of interoperable multimedia conferencing solutions based on open international standards, including IMS. Members include Ericsson, Motorola, NMS Communications, Nokia Corp., RADVISION Ltd., Samsung Electronics, Sharp Corp. and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications.

For information on how Telcordia is addressing interoperability relative to VoIP routing, visit www.xchangemag.com/addedinsight.

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