Interactive multimedia services provided by an interoperable-global network using world wide standards

As technology evolves and communication bandwidth becomes cheaper, the world is moving into "the information age". Today we are confronted with services like video on demand, distant learning, tele-commuting, home shopping and terms like "information superhighway" and "info bahn". What does all this mean? Well, it means that in order to provide these new services an upgraded communications infrastructure must be introduced. This infrastructure must provide for the six major areas of multimedia/broadband service delivery. These six areas are: 1. the customer's premises equipment (CPE), 2. access networks (AN), 3. core switching networks (core), 4. gateways (GW), 5. servers and (server) and 6. network management (TMN). Since these six areas cover such a wide range of technologies and expertise, no one company has the resources to deliver all of the equipment needed for the information superhighway. Therefore specifications and standards must be defined that allow for interoperability and interconnection of various vendor's equipment. However, before these standards can be defined a network architecture model must be defined showing the interfaces which need to be standardized. Siemens has made extensive investigations into these interfaces and what types of standards are needed. The results of these investigations are provided in this paper.