AN ARCHITECTURAL APPROACH TO MINIMIZING FEATURE INTERACTIONS IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Feature interaction, in the context of telecommunications, is the phen omenon where a user (end-user or system operator) observes services fa iling to perform as expected, and where the failures are due to the pr esence of other services (or multiple instances of a single service) i n the network. In this paper we propose an architectural approach to m inimize the problem of feature interaction while increasing the reusab ility of software for services, Our approach recognizes that currently many assumptions about service operations and system capabilities are implicitly built into the service software architecture. We claim tha t many nontrivial feature interactions arise when services or technolo gies with new capabilities, based on conflicting assumptions, are intr oduced, We propose an architecture based on software agents and separa tion of concerns, This architecture effectively removes many common as sumptions about roles and technology from the service software archite cture, thus reducing the need to provide ad hoc solutions to particula r feature interactions. We demonstrate the power of such an architectu re by showing how it deals with examples of interactions among existin g services, interactions introduced by Universal Personal Telecommunic ations (UPT), and its applicability to emerging broadband service requ irements.