DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF INTELLIGENT MULTIMEDIA SERVICES

Telecommunications networks are evolving globally to keep pace with ra pid technological, regulatory and market changes. This is particularly evident in the introduction of intelligent network (IN) capabilities by network providers around the world. These IN capabilities will augm ent the network ''intelligence'' via the common channel signaling netw ork and distributed service control points allowing users to gain acce ss to advanced communications services. In this paper, we present the results of our research in the area of intelligent multimedia services . One of the main results has been the design of novel multimedia serv ices operating over different network platforms. One of the new servic es being designed is an intelligent multimedia gateway, providing inte rconnectivity between the public service telephone network and the Int ernet. The design of this service has proved useful in gaining insight into the way novel intelligent multimedia services across network pla tforms will benefit from the use of IN technology. A performance evalu ation of the service has also proved valuable to identify the major sy stem and traffic parameters to consider when designing and deploying I N multimedia services across multiple networks. (C) 1997 Elsevier Scie nce B.V.