TINA - A SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE FOR TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES

Alcatel is a core member of TINA-C, a consortium of operators, and tel ecommunication and computer vendors, started in 1993 for a five year p eriod. The object is to support rapid and flexible introduction of new services by use of distributed computing and object oriented techniqu es in current network architectures. A key idea is the separation betw een ''delivery'' and ''service'' segments, which map into a separation between ''connection'' and ''session'' management. A major enhancemen t of this approach is integration of management and control within eac h service: TMN is no more a separated part of the architecture. This a rticle describes the proposed architecture and outlines Alcatel's inte rest in TINA.