Tina: Its achievements and its future directions

The telecommunications information networking architecture (TINA) has reached a mature state and TINA solutions are now appearing in the market. This article presents a brief sketch of TINA's past and the overall objectives as they are seen today. It further describes the current technological state of the architecture with its business model, the computing environment requirements, the session model, the networking resource model, and its impact on the network technology evolution. Eventually, the path TINA will take into the future is indicated by outlining the TINA Trial project and the workgroup activities; the driving forces during TINA's current phase.