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ATS CONFERENCE 2002 PRESS REVIEW |
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FRIDAY 1st MARCH 2002
ATHENS, GREECE
ATS-CONF 2002 – the first ever conference on Conformance Testing and Interoperability – was held on 1st March 2002 at the Divani Apollon Hotel in Vougliameni, Athens. The event provided researchers and developers with a focused and highly-interactive opportunity to present and discuss current work and future directions in conformance testing and interoperability.
Telecommunications professionals from all over Europe attended the event, which was officially opened by John Vergados, Secretary of the Association of Mechanical and Electrical Engineers of the Technical Chamber of Greece.
Striking the Balance
The participants constituted a balance of opinion from industry, academia and standardisation bodies. Keynote addresses were delivered by delegates of the European Commission, Nokia and the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA).
Further invited speakers came from SOLINET, Alcatel - Lucent, Intracom, Cinderella, Telekom Austria, the University of Bradford and ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute). The presentations mainly concerned issues surrounding next generation networks.
The challenge is not so much that these are intended to support more features than the networks of today, but that they are expected to do so much more quickly than today. They should also be able to support services in a more integrated way, and they should become simpler and cheaper to operate, maintain and manage.
However networks are, in fact, becoming more heterogeneous rather than less so. Different parts of the network with their specific characteristics, in addition to growing competition, leads to more convergence difficulties. There are strong trends towards the use of IP as the converged protocol, but IP is only just emerging from its infancy period, and it is estimated that this will take at least another 25 years to reach maturity.
European Commission
Martin Potts demonstrated how the European Commission recognises the amount of work still to be completed in the area of network interoperability. The Commission currently supports 204 projects, of which their contribution totals € 556 million, and it is committed to providing further support. Indeed, one of their goals is to get from five to seventy per cent of the world population on-line.
One common conclusion reached during the conference was that technical solutions will always need to co-exist at different levels. Interworking will become more complex as new technologies emerge, services become more complex, and as 3rd party service providers enter the market.
National Technical University of Athens
Professor Stassinopoulos from NTUA proposed that the solution lies in providing a unified service architecture over heterogeneous environments. Service execution architectures exist in the three main networks: PSTN, Internet and PLMN. For next generation networks to support the emerging service provision issues, such as the advanced design and deployment of new multimedia services, these networks will need to be interoperable. By basing a unified service provision architecture on IN, more homogeneity will be achieved, enabling cross-network services to operate seamlessly across different underlying networks.
Nokia Research Centre
On language issues, Dr. Colin Willcock from Nokia Research Centre, presented the current status and outlook of TTCN-3 (Test and Testing Control Notation) – the new internationally standardised testing language for formally defining test scenarios. TTCN-3 takes parts of its predecessor, TTCN-2, and combines it with a new powerful textual notation. TTCN-3 supports the IP protocol, and it is anticipated that a number of commercial toolsets to support the language will be available in 2002, Dr. Willcock said.
ETSI ETSI has been using TTCN-3 for testing OSP and SIP protocol implementations. Anthony Wiles, manager of the PTCC (Protocol Testing and Competence Centre) at ETSI, confirmed that they had implemented OSP and SIP test suites, based on TTCN-3, and that they are currently validating them on an experimental test platform.
Cinderella Moving on to a related language, Anders Olson from Cinderella (Denmark) presented the evolution of SDL (Systems Description Language), and the concept of using it as a language for testing. SDL is a powerful language, which has evolved since 1980 to meet the changing demands of a wide range of industrial requirements, from aerospace to medical systems and circuit design.
Up until now SDL has mainly been used for the implementation of state machines. The concept of enhancing it for use in conformance and interoperability testing has been the topic of much recent discussion, and ATS-CONF 2002 was probably the first time this was publicly raised in the presence of high-profile members of the TTCN community. This led to a series of questions, such as whether this sub-set of SDL would become a standardised language for testing. The question of tool support for using the language for this purpose was also raised.
Alcatel The language of telecommunications has a rich body of terminology, and Helmut Weiser attended ATS-CONF 2002 to introduce Alcatel’s guidelines on using the various terms and definitions involved in testing. When someone speaks of interworking, do they really mean interoperability? Similarly, when we hear of conformance, should we not be thinking of compatibility?
These, among other terms, such as interconnection, certification, verification, integration and validation, are defined in standards from ETSI, ITU and the IETF, but they are often misused. To assure correct working between different systems from different providers, it is necessary to explicitly define how this correct working is to be verified. Thus, clear understanding and proper use of the terms are required.
Telekom Austria
Another popular theme at the conference was the re-use and simplification of technology for greater efficiency. Boris Grabner highlighted Telekom Austria’s requirements for future intelligent networks. Telekom Austria recognises that the Internet offers new and innovative ways to support the growth in demand for data services. To optimise investment and generate new revenues, they are analysing which platform types can be re-used and/or evolved to meet future demands.
Intracom
Panagiotis Galiotos from Intracom highlighted that VoIP is facing a period of prosperity and that, due to growing diversity, it is necessary to pay close attention to interworking issues. Moreover, interworking is an essential part of feature development, as it allows the reuse of VoIP solutions that have already been deployed. VoIP must also avoid importing heavy delays that may be caused by great complexity, Mr Galiotos said.
SOLINET
Adding to this theme, William Skelton from SOLINET (Germany) focused on the evolution of signalling systems for testability. He highlighted the many complex interworking issues involved in signalling, stating that that it was practically impossible to exhaustively test all those issues. This is made worse by making solutions more complex than necessary. A doubling in complexity can lead to a quadrupling (or more) in the effort to test, which often leads to a cost explosion. Applications must now evolve around testability, and it makes sense to determine testability as part of the original system specification, where the means of testing a system are considered in its initial design. This would be more cost-effective, as it would help to identify and remove errors early on in the development cycle.
Implementation and test activities must converge, where common components can be used for both implementation and test, removing the need to duplicate information or procedures. As technology matures the value for individual components depreciates. The trend is moving towards integrated solutions, and the SAFIRE Signalling System from SOLINET is one of the first, providing a single platform for rapid prototyping and testing. Such solutions can be put to practical use in both rapid-prototyping and the validation of new systems. The Darwinian concept of “survival of the fittest” also applies in technology, where limited, reusable components are the fittest.
In any case, where a new network technology or service is introduced, reference conformance test suites, for validating that the performance and quality requirements of equipment and services are met, seem to be a basic prerequisite for checking feasibility.
ACATS Forum
The conference was organised by the ACATS Forum - an industry-oriented initiative for the validation of test suites. To date the forum has pooled over 11,000 test cases with a documented validation status, which it makes available for downloading on their website. The ACATS Forum also provides a platform for open exchange and discussion on relevant topics. The three founding members of the ACATS Forum are SOLINET (Germany), Alcatel - Lucent (Germany) and Teletel (Greece).
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