Intelligent Broadband Networks

Intelligent Broadband Networks Edited by lakovos Venieris National Technical University of Athens, Greece and Heinrich Hussmann Dresden University of Technology , Germany 'Intelligent network elements' monitor the flow of user service requests, which enables Intelligent Networks (IN) to manage and control transmission, services and connections, and service allocation across the network automatically. IN can efficiently handle and control complex multiparty, multiconnection multimedia services when integrated with Broadband ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) signaling. This book provides an overview of the current status and the future trends in Broadband network evolution and multimedia services. It includes studies that cover all the issues of IN-based Broadband networks including: abstract functional models, software and hardware implementation requirements and techniques, interoperability with other non-IN and IN systems like TINA, and Internet, practical experience from prototype implementation and transitional pilot demonstrations, and system performance and scalability. Unlike any other work on IN currently available, case studies of IN-based networks supporting a Virtual Private Network, Video on Demand and Broadband Video Conferencing Services are used as the basis for presenting service deployment techniques, as well as for evaluating performance results. The wide scope of topics covered in this book is crucial to network managers, multimedia communications engineers, researchers as well as students of relevant fields, such as: * Integration of Intelligent Functions into Broadband networks * Flexible, modular architecture reducing the system complexity and enabling easy migration to implementation * Methodology and models for evaluating system design options * Up-to-the-minute research not available in any other single volume