Dynamic program modification in telecommunications systems

In today´s public telecommunications network, the logic of telecommunications services is typically defined in software that executes in stored program control switching systems or other network elements. Changes in network functionality require that new versions of software be installed in these network elements, a process that has proven inconvenient and error-prone. The authors expect that changes to network software will occur with increasing frequency in the future, exacerbating the software update problem. They discuss the requirements for performing software updates in the telecommunications network and describe a specific approach that allows dynamic modification of programs running in a distributed environment. They also discuss the implications of this approach for the design of telecommunications software