P-Gate: Pushing the operator service platform towards the network edge

In order to extend the coverage of network-based services to the home environment and offload core network servers, this paper presents a novel service platform called P-Gate that resides in home gateways such as femtocells or wireless LAN access points. The P-Gate platform allows for scalability through self-organized overlay techniques and supports a full integration with centralized service nodes such as the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) to provide functionality like authorization, accounting and bootstrapping. The overlay system scalability has been shown through large-scale simulations and in a Planet - Lab deployment. Further, we have implemented the P-Gate platform on the basis of wireless LAN access points. It serves as a testbed for IMS evolution concepts towards a next generation service platform based on distributed service nodes.