Multi-vendor integrations of SCPs and SSPs

This paper reports the experiences encountered in the multi-vendor integration processes of SSP and SCP at ChungHwa Telecom (CHT), Taiwan, ROC and puts forth some suggestions for the goal of successful INAP interworking. The intelligent network of CHT long distance management (CHT-LDM) consists of nodes fabricated by three of the major telecommunication vendors in the world. The SSP vendors are Alcatel, Lucent, and Siemens while the SCP ones are Alcatel and Stratus. Alcatel SCP provide personal number (PN) and virtual private network (VPN) services, and Stratus SCP provide advanced freephone (A-080) service developed by the IN Project of CHT Telecom Laboratories (CHT-TL). In the processes of PN, A-080, and VPN service deployment, multi-vendor integrations of IN services and their access platform in terms of adherence to the commonly recognized international standards are regarded as one of the major goals. The first step of IN service deployment is to define the specification of the intelligent network application protocol (INAP). The specification of CHT-LDM INAP is defined based on ETS 300 374-1. Based on the INAP specification, the integration process is divided into three phases: conformance, service feature and interworking tests. In all the three testing phases, problems are found, clarified, and solved after discussions and negotiations with the vendors. These problems can be classified into categories by their nature: (1) information element (IE) encoding and decoding error, (2) parameter decoding failure, (3) parameter value error, (4) parameter default value error, (5) functionality error, and (6) ACN negotiation error.