Convergence of telecommunications and computing on networking models for integrated services and applications

Abstract

This paper gives a snapshot on the convergence of telecom and computer industries on a common vision on networking models against the stringent requirements of multimedia applications on future integrated services information infrastructure.

At first, we summarize requirements and elements of such infrastructure, and introduce a networking model that is framed into four layers: interconnection (bearer), internetworking, interoperability (middleware), and application. Then, we offer a brief review on the classical telecom networking model, the current status of ATM multimedia networking features, and the ongoing activities for fostering evolution of telecom networks to enhance control, management and service delivery. An overview on the current Internet network architecture follows, and the recent achievements and the evolving networking protocols to cope with real-time multimedia applications are presented.

The described integration schemes of IP and ATM resource reservation protocols, to provide efficient resource utilization and QoS guarantee in broadband networks, fall into the first two lower architectural layers, which are the foundation of network computing and communication services. In particular, we present a summary description of the comparative features of both IP and ATM protocol approaches, and we report on current proposals for handling IP on ATM networks.

Finally, we briefly discuss trends in middleware services, according to the emerging technology of transportable computation and intelligent agents. Interoperability of heterogeneous networked systems is based on an agreed distributed program encoding and computation environment, thus pushing the key point of the layered networking architecture up into the middleware layer.