A novel service oriented framework for automatically switched transport network

In the last few years customers are willing to use broadband connections to support concurrent and heterogeneous services. At the same time telecommunication operators would like to use the same transport infrastructure (possibly with minor changes) to deliver these emerging services in an integrated way. To this purpose, enhancements of the existing ASTN architecture are proposed. Specifically the intelligent network conceptual model is used to introduce an intermediate layer, named service layer, to interface the network customer to a service-independent transport network. The service plane has the task of masking the transport-related implementation details from the abstract request of a service by a customer. In addition, the service layer inherently suggests the separation of the telecommunication operators role in two distinct activities: the network provider and the service provider. The proposed service-oriented architecture is described in terms of functional blocks and interfaces and it consists in an open framework subjects to be implemented using whatever technology, both hardware and software. For a proof of concept, a testbed, named SOON (service oriented optical networks) running the newly developed service-oriented software modules has been implemented as an example of direct interaction between customer and optical network for a dynamic service request. The validation of the architecture is done by demonstrating a working service, namely a virtual private network (VPN) service.