RESEARCH AREAS IN ICT

Saif Bin Ghelaita

Director of Technologies & Standards

TRA UAE

Agenda

• Introduction• ENUM• IPV6• Next Generation Networks

– What is NGN?– Architecture– Convergence– Challenges

• Conclusions

• ICT sector is developing rapidly• Many sectors became dependent on ICT

– Financial– Real Estate– Education– Health

• Currently, ICT sector is converging into a single network based on Internet protocol (IP).Such network is known as NGN.

• Moving towards NGN, opened many research areas such as IPV6 and ENUM which will be required to make the NGN more efficient.

Introduction

• Migrating from circuit switched network to packet switched network will enable the ICT sector to be more innovative.

• Currently, many countries started to invest heavily in the ICT sector knowing that it will drive the other entities into massive success.

Introduction

ENUM

• What is ENUM

• Types of ENUM

• Features & Benefits

• Status & Next steps

What is ENUM?

• Provides a bridge between Internet based communications services and conventional telephone networks

• Converts telephone numbers to domain names and stores them

• Enables end users to associate one or more communications addresses with their telephone number:– Internet addresses for VoIP services– Email & instant messaging addresses– Other telephone numbers– Web pages

Types of ENUM

• Public User ENUM– The end user can provision his or her records in the ENUM registry

in the public domain e164.arpa. In other words, the end user is the registrant for the ENUM domain name within the domain e164.arpa

• Private Infrastructure ENUM– Creating a domain name from a telephone number (TN) and

resolving it to a URI. It does not, however, use the domain e164.arpa– Private ENUM is used when there is a closed user group that wants

to use ENUM to exchange IP traffic.

• Public Infrastructure ENUM– National number administrators typically assign TNs to

communications carriers, not to end users; carriers then assign the TNs to end users. The carrier’s network and its associated addresses are highly secure, and access is strictly maintained and limited to other service providers

Features and Benefits: • ENUM using DNS resource records can map to different services such as:

• E-mail Addresses

• VoIP SIP/ H.323 Servers

• Voice Mail Servers

• Fax

• Website

• Others still to be introduced…

• ENUM enabled DNS creates a low cost shared service since DNS is already globally available, fast, reliable, and open to public.

• With ENUM using E.164 Telephone numbers:

• Consumers are already familiar with E.164 numbers• One Number addressing eliminates need to remember multiple, complex

addresses• Telephone numbers are internationally understood and linguistically neutral

Status & Next Steps

• TRA is managing the UAE resources including ENUM

• Ready for ENUM

• Future plans include ENUM trials

IPV6

• Why IPV6 needed?

• What will it add?

• Status & Next steps

Why IPv6?

• IPv6 solves the main problem is IPv4, that is, the exhaustion of addresses to connect to computers or hosts in a packet switched network.

• The key features of IPv6 are:– Large address space:128 bits as compared to 32

bits in IPv4 – Quality of Service: IPv6 brings QoS that several new

applications require such as IP Telephony, Interactive games etc

Why IPv6?

• Mobility: Keeps the same IP address regardless of the network and the equipment is connected to.

• Stateless Auto-reconfiguration of Hosts:This feature allows IPv6 host to configure automatically when connected to a routed IPv6 network.

Network-layer security: IPv6 implements network-layer encryption and authentication via IPsec.

What will it add? – Internet for Everything• IPV6 services or application are considered the

drivers to move to IPV6 for many, such as:

•Home Networking

•Triple Play

•Peer-to-Peer Applications

•IPv6 VPNs

•Mobile networking

•Social applications

(chat, VoIP, messaging, p2p)Digital

•IP-TVS

•IP-based VoIP

•Online gaming

•E-Health (Home Hospital care)

•Utility sector application

•Environmental Monitoring

•Sensor Networks

•Public Safety and emergency networks

Current Status of IPv6 Deployment In UAE

IPv6 general Awareness: Yes

IPv6 deployment in the Public sector: No

IPv6 deployment in the Private sector: Yes

IPv6 curriculum in the Education: Yes

ISP’s deploying IPv6: Yes

Next Generation Networks (NGN)

• NGN as defined by ITU:

“A packet based network able to provide telecommunication services and able to make use of multiple broadband, QoS enabled transport technologies and in which service related functions are independent from underlying transport-related technologies”

ArchitectureVoIP IM VOD Video Conf.

Applications

Service Control and Transport

IP Core

Mobile Access

Fixed Access Access

Convergence

• The telecom network of fixed and mobile is converging to a single horizontal network that provides multimedia services over an IP based architecture.

• There will not be a circuit switched network in the future. The voice and data will be transported over IP.

• Universal Access:Wireline and wireless access.

Challenges

• The deployment of NGN using Internet Protocol (IP) connectivity to support fixed and mobile voice, video, data and IPTV provides new opportunities to innovative services. It also raises new challenges concerning Quality of Service (QoS) and Consumer Protection.

Quality of Service (QoS)

• Excellent voice quality of the circuit switched network. Is it going to be the same with IP based network?

• Many issues of QoS are related to IP networks such as voice quality, delay, jitter, etc.

• Migration from the existing network to NGN will introduce some challenges such as service disruption, speed of delivering the service and quality of multimedia services.

Consumer Protection

• The introduction of IP networks will bring challenges on how to handle phishing, unauthorized access to personal data and malicious virus dissemination via SPAM.

• In general, same threats available in Internet, could rise in NGN networks.

Conclusions

• The role of ICT

• ENUM

• IPV6

• Benefits of NGN

• How to address QoS

• How to address Consumer Protection