An investigation into the readiness of open source software to build a Telco Cloud for virtualising network functions
- Authors: Chindeka, Tapiwa C
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MSc
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124320 , vital:35593
- Description: Cloud computing offers new mechanisms that change the way networks can be created and managed. The increased demand for multimedia and Internet of Things (IoT) services using the Internet Protocol is also fueling the need to look more into a networking approach that is less reliant on physical hardware components and allows new networks and network components to be created on-demand. Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) is a networking paradigm that decouples network functions from the hardware on which they run on. This offers new approaches to telecommunication providers who are looking to new ways of improving Quality of Service (QoS) in cost effective ways. Cloud technologies have given way to more specialised cloud environments such as the telco cloud. The telco cloud is a cloud environment where telecommunication services are hosted utilising NFV techniques. As the use of telecommunication standards moves towards 5G, network services will be provided in a virtualised manner in order to keep up with the demand. Open source software is a driver for innovation as it is has a collaborative culture to support it. This research investigates the readiness of open source tools to build a telco cloud that supports functions such as autoscaling and fault tolerance. Currently available open source software was explored for the different aspects involved in building a cloud from the ground up. The ETSI NFV MANO framework is also discussed as it is a widely used guiding standard for implementing NFV. Guided by the ETSI NFV MANO framework, open source software was used in an experiment to build a resilient cloud environment in which a virtualised IP Multimedia Subsystem (vIMS) network was deployed. Through this experimentation, it is evident that open source tools are mature enough to build the cloud environment and its ETSI NFV MANO compliant orchestration. However, features such as autoscaling and fault tolerance are still fairly immature and experimental.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Designing and prototyping WebRTC and IMS integration using open source tools
- Authors: Motsumi, Tebagano Valerie
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Internet Protocol multimedia subsystem , Session Initiation Protocol (Computer network protocol) , Computer software -- Development , Web Real-time Communications (WebRTC)
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MSc
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63245 , vital:28386
- Description: WebRTC, or Web Real-time Communications, is a collection of web standards that detail the mechanisms, architectures and protocols that work together to deliver real-time multimedia services to the web browser. It represents a significant shift from the historical approach of using browser plugins, which over time, have proven cumbersome and problematic. Furthermore, it adopts various Internet standards in areas such as identity management, peer-to-peer connectivity, data exchange and media encoding, to provide a system that is truly open and interoperable. Given that WebRTC enables the delivery of multimedia content to any Internet Protocol (IP)-enabled device capable of hosting a web browser, this technology could potentially be used and deployed over millions of smartphones, tablets and personal computers worldwide. This service and device convergence remains an important goal of telecommunication network operators who seek to enable it through a converged network that is based on the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). IMS is an IP-based subsystem that sits at the core of a modern telecommunication network and acts as the main routing substrate for media services and applications such as those that WebRTC realises. The combination of WebRTC and IMS represents an attractive coupling, and as such, a protracted investigation could help to answer important questions around the technical challenges that are involved in their integration, and the merits of various design alternatives that present themselves. This thesis is the result of such an investigation and culminates in the presentation of a detailed architectural model that is validated with a prototypical implementation in an open source testbed. The model is built on six requirements which emerge from an analysis of the literature, including previous interventions in IMS networks and a key technical report on design alternatives. Furthermore, this thesis argues that the client architecture requires support for web-oriented signalling, identity and call handling techniques leading to a potential for IMS networks to natively support these techniques as operator networks continue to grow and develop. The proposed model advocates the use of SIP over WebSockets for signalling and DTLS-SRTP for media to enable one-to-one communication and can be extended through additional functions resulting in a modular architecture. The model was implemented using open source tools which were assembled to create an experimental network testbed, and tests were conducted demonstrating successful cross domain communications under various conditions. The thesis has a strong focus on enabling ordinary software developers to assemble a prototypical network such as the one that was assembled and aims to enable experimentation in application use cases for integrated environments.
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- Date Issued: 2018
A unified data repository for rich communication services
- Authors: Sogunle, Oluwasegun Francis
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSc
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/5777 , vital:20974
- Description: Rich Communication Services (RCS) is a framework that defines a set of IP-based services for the delivery of multimedia communications to mobile network subscribers. The framework unifies a set of pre-existing communication services under a single name, and permits network operators to re-use investments in existing network infrastructure, especially the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), which is a core part of a mobile network and also acts as a docking station for RCS services. RCS generates and utilises disparate subscriber data sets during execution, however, it lacks a harmonised repository for the management of such data sets, thus making it difficult to obtain a unified view of heterogeneous subscriber data. This thesis proposes the creation of a unified data repository for RCS which is based on the User Data Convergence (UDC) standard. The standard was proposed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a major telecommunications standardisation group. UDC provides an approach for consolidating subscriber data into a single logical repository without adversely affecting existing network infrastructure, such as the IMS. Thus, this thesis details the design and development of a prototypical implementation of a unified repository, named Converged Subscriber Data Repository (CSDR). It adopts a polyglot persistence model for the underlying data store and exposes heterogeneous data through the Open Data Protocol (OData), which is a candidate implementation of the Ud interface defined in the UDC architecture. With the introduction of polyglot persistence, multiple data stores can be used within the CSDR and disparate network data sources can access heterogeneous data sets using OData as a standard communications protocol. As the CSDR persistence model becomes more complex due to the inclusion of more storage technologies, polyglot persistence ensures a consistent conceptual view of these data sets through OData. Importantly, the CSDR prototype was integrated into a popular open-source implementation of the core part of an IMS network known as the Open IMS Core. The successful integration of the prototype demonstrates its ability to manage and expose a consolidated view of heterogeneous subscriber data, which are generated and used by different RCS services deployed within IMS.
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- Date Issued: 2017
Building an E-health system for health awareness campaigns in poor areas
- Authors: Gremu, Chikumbutso David
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: National health services -- South Africa , Medical informatics , Public health -- Information services
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSc
- Identifier: vital:4708 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017930
- Description: Appropriate e-services as well as revenue generation capabilities are key to the deployment and the sustainability for ICT installations in poor areas, particularly common in developing country. The area of e-Health is a promising area for e-services that are both important to the population in those areas and potentially of direct interest to National Health Organizations, which already spend money for Health campaigns there. This thesis focuses on the design, implementation, and full functional testing of HealthAware, an application that allows health organization to set up targeted awareness campaigns for poor areas. Requirements for such application are very specific, starting from the fact that the preparation of the campaign and its execution/consumption happen in two different environments from a technological and social point of view. Part of the research work done for this thesis was to make the above requirements explicit and then use them in the design. This phase of the research was facilitated by the fact that the thesis' work was executed within the context of the Siyakhula Living Lab (SLL; www.siyakhulaLL.org), which has accumulated multi-year experience of ICT deployment in such areas. As a result of the found requirements, HealthAware comprises two components, which are web-based, Java applications that run in a peer-to-peer fashion. The first component, the Dashboard, is used to create, manage, and publish information for conducting awareness campaigns or surveys. The second component, HealthMessenger, facilitates users' access to the campaigns or surveys that were created using the Dashboard. The HealthMessenger was designed to be hosted on TeleWeaver while the Dashboard is hosted independently of TeleWeaver and simply communicates with the HealthMessenger through webservices. TeleWeaver is an application integration platform developed within the SLL to host software applications for poor areas. Using a core service of TeleWeaver, the profile service, where all the users' defining elements are contained, campaigns and surveys can be easily and effectively targeted, for example to match specific demographics or geographic locations. Revenue generation is attained via the logging of the interactions of the target users in the communities with the applications in TeleWeaver, from which billing data is generated according to the specific contractual agreements with the National Health Organization. From a general point of view, HealthAware contributes to the concrete realizations of a bidirectional access channel between Health Organizations and users in poor communities, which not only allows the communication of appropriate content in both directions, but get 'monetized' and in so doing becomes a revenue generator.
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- Date Issued: 2015