A conceptual model of service customization and its implementation

Abstract

With the development of Internet and next generation networks in telecommunications, more and more new services are required to be introduced into networks. Introducing new services into traditional network is always associated with standardizing new protocols. The progress of protocol standardization usually takes several years, which cannot meet the increasing demands of the applications in Internet and next generation networks. Service customization in network systems may be one possible solution to cope with this problem. Based on the principle that network service is provided by interactions among protocol entities, this paper proposes a conceptual model of service customization (SECUM) by separating the service logic from protocol interactive logic within existing network architecture. The theory of Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) is used to formalize the SECUM in order to locate exactly the service logic and to define precisely the SECUM. For validating the SECUM's usability in practical network systems, this paper also proposes an implementation model for SECUM: a component-based protocol implementation model (CPIM). CPIM discomposes protocol entity into application component, service component, message component and communication component. Service component associates application component with message component. Users or network managers can customize network services by configuring service component. The paper shows respectively the applications of SECUM and CPIM by proposing a customizable IP service model based on SECUM and describing an implementation of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) based on CPIM. Compared with the existing service-customization techniques, SECUM is a service customization model internal to network system and may provide more powerful capabilities of service customization.