Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, Volume 30, Number 15, September, Elsevier, 1998
| In many countries regulatory pressure is likely to force
the incumbent network operators to open up their networks to other service
providers. The Intelligent Network is a catalyst to allow this to be technically
feasible. Clearly the network operators must address feature interaction
detection within the Intelligent Network. As the size and penetration of
intelligent network and residentail network services becomes greater, these
issues will have to be addressed if the process of designing and provisioning
new services is not to remain difficult and costly. This paper explores
some of these issues from the network operator's perspective and
considers the impact and restrictions that they impose on feature interaction
management techniques. Within these constraints a new practical approach
proposed by the authors is outlined, based on the international ITU-T IN
recommendations (CS-1). The approach proposes initially capturing "correct"
(or signature) feature behaviour in a test environment. The signatures
are then used at run-time to monitor feature behaviour and to detect deviations
from the correct behaviour. The detection approach includes a predictive
element, which allows some types of interaction to be avoided. In cases
where this is not possible, a default call recovery approach is applied
which restores the call to a known state.
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