In Next Generation Networks, features may be provided from various venues, expanding the boundaries of where features are provided. The basis of this proposal is that the coordination of feature interactions in NGN could be served well with the use of semaphores.A feature semaphore is associated with each zone of a call session, and these semaphores become part of the user's per call data. This paper explores how feature interactions could be controlled using these concepts in lieu of the current circuit based method of triggers and feature precedence rules BIOGRAPHY of SPEAKER Patricia has a BS in biology from Benedictine University, Lisle, Illinois, and a MS in computer science from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. For the past 25 years, Pat has worked in telecommunications at, what is now, Lucent Technologies Inc. and is currently a member of a wireless team bringing 3GPP/3GPP2 proposals into fruition, focusing on software architectural issues.
Even though much of feature control can reside off-switch, the switch is in the critical path of all features and ultimately still has control of the call.
End Point End PointCircuit Switch
Circuit Switch
Service NodeOne of the challenges of applying IN to NGN is translating the time based, circuit call model to the IP call session model. While an IP call session does have temporal elements, the main defining skeleton of the IP world is not the single call model with specific call events that the current telephony system enjoys. Although the IP "telephony" model can emulate a circuit call model, IP deals with communication paths between smart endpoints, not call events. Because of this very fundamental difference in the communication between two endpoints, using the circuit term "call" in the IP network becomes misleading and confusing. This paper uses the term "call" to refer to the legacy telephone provided service, and borrows the term "call session" to refer to the service in the NGN. 2
