The role of distributed computing in telecommunications: experiences and analyses

The last decade has seen a trend in telecommunication architectures of moving the controlling intelligence off the switches and onto a separate controlling entity. This is seen in intelligent network (IN) architectures where services run on an SCP and control messages are relayed back to the switch. It is taken further in architectures such as TINA where a service platform manipulates connection graphs and control is performed as object to object communication over a distributed processing environment (DPE). This collection of objects forms a distributed service and control architecture for advanced telecommunication services. We examine the application of distributed computing to both the service model and the control plane.