Provision of integrated services-the service node approach

Today we see an obvious trend towards the provision of integrated services. The paper considers the Service Node providing a powerful approach for such service integration tasks because it forms a flexible platform for a wide range of different architectures and applications. After discussing the motivation for a complementation of the classical IN architecture the paper elaborates on the Service Node as the basic element for the further evolution of the IN concept towards more distributed network intelligence. In particular the paper presents: a description of the Service Node concept (e.g. the classical SCP as a special case of a Service Node); Services which are typically provided by Service Nodes; Service Node architecture; The integration of PSTN/ISDN services with mobile services based on a Service Node approach (a practical example); and discussion of future directions for Intelligent Networks taking the Internet challenge into account