P. Lorenz (Ed.): ICN 2001, LNCS 2094, pp. 488–496, 2001 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2001 Realizing Distributed Intelligent Networks Based on Distributed Object and Mobile Agent Technologies Menelaos K. Perdikeas 1 , Odysseas I. Pyrovolakis 1 , Andreas E. Papadakis 1 , and Iakovos S. Venieris 1 1 National Technical University of Athens – Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering 9 Heroon Polytechniou, 157 73 Athens, Greece {perdikea,ody,apap}@telecom.ntua.gr ivenieri@cc.ece.ntua.gr Abstract. An architecture enhancing the Intelligent Network to a Distributed IN is described. To this end, Distributed Processing Environment and Mobile Agent technologies have been employed. The added value, in the context of flexibility and manageability of the exertion of the aforementioned technologies, as well as the extent to which they can be utilized are discussed. The configuration architecture is presented and an implementation – oriented, detailed description of the Service Execution Node and its constituents is provided. 1 Introduction The Intelligent Network (IN) approach for providing advanced services to end users aims primarily at minimizing changes in network nodes by locating all “service- related” (and thus likely to change) functionality in dedicated “IN-servers”, named as “Service Control Points” (SCPs) [1], [2]. These servers are in a sense “external” to the core network which in this way needs to comprise only a more or less rudimentary switching functionality and the ability to recognize IN call requests and route them to the specialized SCPs. Since the time of its standardization by ITU-T [3], IN has become the default way for telecom operators to enhance the ability of their core network to provide value added services to their customers in a cost effective manner. In this paper we are considering the use of distributed processing technologies such as CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model) and RMI (Remote Method Invocation) along with mobile code ones in order to enhance IN’s potential. We are mainly focusing on issues concerning the design and implementation of an IN architecture that would be more flexible, distributed and facilitating object oriented service creation and efficient services life cycle management. 2 Applying New Software Technologies in Intelligent Network Before going on into describing the actual architecture, a more abstract and general discussion containing some of our experiences and issues emerging when applying novel software technologies in the context of IN precede. Specifically, the impact of