Enhancing the Serviceability and the Availability of IMS-Based Multimedia Services: Avoiding Core Service Failures

The delivery of a highly available and robust service offering is one of the critical objectives of Service Providers. Reaching this objective depends on the level of control Service Providers have on underlying transport infrastructure. Despite current deployment of IMS-based architectures assumes a vertical integration, IMS-based services can be offered without having a control on the underlying IP network. This paper introduces a solution to enhance the robustness of IMS-based architectures without assuming a vertically integrated system. The paper focuses on failures experienced by core service nodes and describes an autonomic solution to allow customers to access to the service during failures. This paper introduces a novel entity called SBC_PROXY which relays messages from peer SBCs (Session Border Controller) to core service platform. An autonomous mode in which all SBCs are involved in the lookup and routing processes is also described. This paper does not make any assumption on the nature of the service which is offered through IMS. Nevertheless, a focus is put on session-based services such as Audio/Video Telephony.