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Broadband Access
MSF To Test IMS/NGN Products
MultiService Forum Expands Responsibilities; Aims To Certify IMS Products By 2008
by Jim Barthold
The MultiService Forum (MSF) is enhancing its effort to certify IMS-enabled next generation network technology by developing and implementing an interoperability-testing program on top of its standard PlugFest certification efforts. The result, to culminate at Global MSF Interoperability (GMI) in 2008, will certify the interoperability of IMS/NGN equipment before it’s submitted to service provider labs.
The MSF has traditionally worked to ensure that finalized products interoperate with each other and in member service provider networks. Its new focus adds product testing to determine if the gear interoperates before it’s submitted to service provider labs. This should save steps for both vendors, who are working in an increasingly crowded product space and service providers who have significantly more products serving as moving parts within their next generation networks.
“Service providers are looking for a way where the equipment vendors have the equipment certified before it hits the (lab) door,” said Andy Huckridge, director of IMS Solutions at Spirent and chair of the MSF interoperability working group. Not coincidentally, equipment vendors would like to accomplish the same thing “because if they can pass the certification then they can walk into any service provider lab and offer the same kind of equipment,” he said.
Both vendor and service provider members sought MSF involvement, he said, because “interoperability (of next-generation IMS-compatible gear) is orders of magnitude harder from where we were with the old PSTN” when only a few vendors with a few product flavors submitted gear in a few service providers’ labs. The newly expanded MSF responsibility, he said, shows that the telecommunications industry is seriously pushing IMS as a way to converge fixed and mobile services.
“Everyone that’s in the Forum has rated certification of the candidates’ implementation agreements as the highest priority work item for this year,” Huckridge said. “The service providers realize it will save them time and effort if vendors come to them pre-certified and the vendors realize they have a much better shot of getting into a service provider lab is they can show that they’ve been certified to work on those networks.”
IMS is a much-hyped protocol that, at least in early versions, is primarily the bonding element between wireless and wireline networks – fixed-mobile convergence (FMC). The specifications were first developed and proffered by the wireless industry, but industry within that group has diminished over time while wireline providers have picked up the banner, said Huckridge. Even with renewed focus from a wireline perspective, the specifications are more liquid and solid with contributions from next generation wireless 3GPP, traditional telco bodes such as the ITU, the cable industry’s PacketCable effort, and even what some consider an off-the-board revision called Advanced IMS (A-IMS) that is being spearheaded by Verizon Wireless with support from Cisco, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Nortel, and Qualcomm.
Among all that bedlam, “fixed line carriers (are) adopting IMS much more readily and the deployments (are) much further on with the fixed lines than they are with mobile,” Huckridge said. “The IMS services available today can’t be deployed on an existing fixed line network.”
MSF has been thrown into this mix because it is a neutral organization with a track record of running successful, large-scale interoperability trials, he said.
“The MSF has a handle on how to get these really big test events done,” said Huckridge, pointing to the success of GMI 2006 as the light that is guiding “the outcome of the work for this year … that will lead us to GMI 2008.”
More Information:
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Juniper Networks Touts Seamless Approach
Is IMS the Only Path to FMC?
Wide range of benefits and value-added features increases interest.
The IMS Waiting Game
For All Its Promise, IMS' Impact Is Less Than Stellar
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