A signaling scheme for B-ISDN and IN integration

This paper proposes an architecture for the control plane of the B-ISDN network. It first explains the requirements for service/connection separation and call/bearer separation, leading to the service session concept and the call concept as separated entities. After explaining the requirements for an access session, the service precedence principle is introduced. According to this principle, only when the service is activated prior to the call, a universal call model may be designed. Our proposed architecture is then described, showing how the precedence principle is respected. Both the functional architecture and the physical architecture are described, which lays the ground for defining all the signaling paths required. After a brief description of the characteristics of each of these signaling paths, and of the corresponding signaling protocols, two examples of services are explained.