The Multiservice Switching Forum has changed its name to the MultiService Forum (MSF) and published the results of its GMI Interoperability Event that was held in October 2004.
The GMI 2004 interoperability event, which ran concurrently at four carrier labs (NTT, KT, BT and Qwest) from October 4th to 16th , tested state-of-the-art network elements against the specific protocols defined in MSF Implementation Agreements (IAs) for supporting a fully integrated VoIP solution. These network elements included softswitches, application servers, media servers, service brokers, call agents, bandwidth managers and other control and management systems.
The demonstration employed more than 50 test plans to exercise the 25 new MSF IAs created since 2002. The four global carriers and 28 equipment vendors demonstrated interoperability under real world conditions. A new White Paper available on the MSF site provides a technical analysis of the event, including insight on each test scenario.
http://www.msforum.org/interoperability/wp2004.shtml
The MSF also announced that SBC Communications and Vodafone are among nine companies that have joined the MSF. This expands the roster of major worldwide carriers (BT, KT, NTT, Qwest and others) participating in the MSF. The other new members are Acme Packet, Tellabs, Huawei Technologies, IP Unity, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Newport Networks, and Tdsoft.
Moving forward, the MSF sees an expanding role across higher levels of the network stack as applications converge across wired and wireless networks. The MSF has set out a 2005/6 Work Plan, including the following items:
- Refine the MSF Release 2 physical architecture and implementation agreements based on experience gained in GMI2004. The goal is to bring the implementation agreements forward to the point where they are ready for actual deployments.
- Add more security to the MSF IAs
- In cooperation with the MFA, develop an MPLS solution for telephony and multimedia solutions
- Add IPv6 support for all its implementation agreements (IAs)
- Ensure IPv4/6 coexistence in the Physical Architecture and scenarios
- Pursue intelligent testing of its components
- Media Server for SIP video control
- Define SIP resource registries
- Further define agent and active networking components and interfaces
- Broaden the MPLS solution framework to include the use of MPLS VPNs
- Investigate new developments in priority signaling
- Investigate the need for new IAs that define device control for session-based services
