IMS NGN Forum Announcing their NGN M-play Plugfest 6 and Document Releases

By Michael Khalilian
Consumers/Enterprise Interoperability Plugfest 6, January 12, 2009 IMS/NGN Forum announced the Plugfest 6 plan for January 12 thru 16, 2009, which will cover the local and visited network services including the following:

• Inter and intra-domain services routing

• Visited networks scenarios

• Billing and charging

• Presence and location based services

• Interfaces operational testing (SIP- Gm interface with various security profiles, DIAMETER Sh interface)

• Others including SIP signaling compression and enhancements, and multiple profiles for public and private users

IMS/NGN White Paper

IMS/NGN Forum developed number of technical, architectural and guideline documents. The following are 2008 releases:

• Requirements for IMS Charging

• The Foundation of the Business Case for IMS

• Secure Mobile Communications with IMS AKA signaling

• Prack Method and Usage

• Rich Multimedia Applications on IMS Framework

• Building Reliable, Available and Secure Service Provider IMS Networks

• Challenges of Voice Call Continuity

• P2PSIP and the IMS: Can they complement each other?

Latest IMS/NGN White Paper Release

“P2PSIP and the IMS: Can they complement each other?” Is Peer to peer (P2P) and IMS, or P2P versus IMS? This paper, the first in a series, addressing one of the most intensely debated issues in IP Multimedia architectures, services and applications, will be followed by other papers describing in more details solutions for load balancing, scalability and services. Many are seeing IMS and P2P as two antagonistic architectures; the first has a control layer at the core, while the other doesn't. The debate over 'centralized' versus 'decentralized' is not new and the Internet didn't really change the essence of this debate. First, we need to recognize that the reality is never 'pure'. Neither fully centralized nor fully decentralized models are used in real life. The paper proposes a different approach to the IMS architecture standardized by the ETSI, ITU and CableLabs; it follows a set of proposals made in IETF for P2P SIP services, and discusses how these could be applied to the IMS architecture at the core of the IMS network.

The IMS/NGN Forum is a global telecommunications industry associations devoted to interoperable IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and Next Generation Networks (NGN) services delivery architecture and solutions. IMS Forum's mission is to accelerate the interoperability of IMS and NGN services and to enable enterprise and residential consumers to benefit fully from the delivery of multimedia mobile and fixed services over broadband cable, wireless, wireline and fiber networks. The IMS Forum is the creator and organizer of the IMS Plugfest™and NGN Plugfest™, the industry's only event focused on verification and certification of IMS and NGN services interoperability through the IMS Certified™ and NGN Certified™ program. Through its organized plugfests, technical working group interactions and other activities, forum members are able to develop cost-effective technical frameworks for converged IP services over wireline, cable, 3G, 4G, WiFi, WiMAX and femtocell broadband networks. For additional information or to join the IMS Forum, NGN Forum and the IMS Plugfest, NGN Plugfest, please visit www.IMSForum.org.

Michael Khalilian is Chairman and President of the IMS/NGN

Forum (www.IMSForum.org, www.NGNForum.org, [email protected]).

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