Using traders for autonomous service provision in intelligent networks

The evolution of the telecommunications environment toward an open distributed processing system, influenced by the recent developments in the framework of open distributed processing (ODP) and intelligent networks (INs), is addressed. The trader is a component for solving autonomy issues, since entities/objects which register for cooperation with other entities at the trader are limiting their autonomy to a specific degree. In contrast to manual negotiations between importers and exporters the trader represents a trusted third party automating these negotiations. The possible mapping of IN and ODP concepts and the application of the ODP trader in INs to support different autonomy issues in the provision of IN services are discussed