Reasons for the question

The traffic characteristics of IP-based applications, and voiceband data communications generally, are significantly different from those of traditional speech communications upon which the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) has been engineered historically. "Call" holding time dramatically increases which can induce an increase of blocked call attempts, which yields reduced Quality of Service to the users of the PSTN. Some network operators have not the resources to expand their network capacity rapidly enough to meet the new and existing demand.

Transaction oriented traffic is also handled inefficiently by the traditional PSTN, with "call" establishment time at least of the same, and often greater, order of magnitude as the duration of the transactions themselves. This is particularly important for "e-commerce" applications.

This question would investigate approaches to signalling that efficiently direct these new traffic demands to (an) appropriately engineered network(s) and to minimize the potentials for service degradation to the PSTN user. This activity could result in modified signalling at the user to network and/or the network-to-network interface(s).

Question

What new recommendations and additions to existing recommendations are required to efficiently identify and direct traffic destined for Internet Service Providers (ISPs)?

Task objectives

1) Establish requirements for recommendations to efficiently identify and direct traffic destined for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), which may identify appropriate IETF-defined RFCs for use in public networks.

Expected completion: 2Q2001.

Relationships

The tasks of this question are related to the requirements for the specification of C-plane protocols that support or use DSS 1 and SS No. 7. The activities leading to successful completion of these tasks require interactions with the IETF MEGACO and SIGTRAN working groups. The study in this area is related also to the signalling capabilities specified in ITU-T H-series and Q-series recommendations, the performance objectives specified in the ITU-T P-series recommendations, and the routing and addressing principles specified in the ITU-T E-series recommendations.