| dc.description.abstract | Within residential networks digital devices may share information between themselves through
several discovery standards such as Bluetooth, Bonjour, or Universal Plug & Play. Similarly, all
residential services are discovered easily so that they can be interconnected and, consequently,
cooperate. However, all of these discovery methods are only possible as far as local networks are
concerned. Accessing services offered by remote devices is a functionality that is not supported by
these standards, resulting in the fact that consumers are requesting this functionality to an ever
increasing degree. Likewise, IP Multimedia Subsystem is the wired network which includes the
internet and the mobile phone networks, providing features such as integrated delivery of
multimedia services, or mobility and roaming; hence causing benefits for consumers. This is why
companies are working on the discovery of remote services using such technologies. So far, this
functionality has been embedded inside the operation of service discovery standards. However,
since the stack architecture of these mechanisms presents many underlying protocols and other
built-in functionalities, the practical implementation of the required functionality is fairly complex. In
addition, consumers would have to care about the service discovery standards which are serving
them. Therefore, implementing this remote functionality outside the scope of operation of the
service discovery standards using IP Multimedia Subsystem is the current aim of the companies
and the purpose of this project. In this way, consumers would be able to use services offered by
remote devices as if they appeared to be similar to services offered by local devices.
This project demonstrates that remote services are virtualized to the extent that they appear, so
that they appear to be local services. Thus, the concept of Service Virtualization has been
explained in the context of residential networks, as well as a certain number of use cases of
Service Virtualization have been presented in order to reinforce its importance for consumers
compared to current remote access methods. A solution architecture for Service Virtualization for a
particular use case has been designed, explaining the parts that comprise Service Virtualization
functionality and how a personal video recorder is brought into a local network using Service
Virtualization. As a final step, a prototype implementation has been carried out as a real
application; both the framework and how the prototype has been implemented have been
explained, hence verifying the concept of Service Virtualization using real devices.
For the realization of the present project Universal Plug & Play and IP Multimedia Subsystem are
the technologies used as service discovery mechanism and wired core network, respectively.
However, since this remote functionality is decoupled from the service discovery mechanism, the
possibility of using another service discovery standard as another alternative is feasible.
Service Virtualization provides good experiences to consumers, since they can consume remote
services with great ease of use without caring which service discovery mechanism and which
operator are serving them; that is, using any remote device from anywhere through completing a
few easy steps. Finally, since IMS is used as wired network, SV shall be used in the context of the
third generation networks, letting operators offer new services with added values for customers. | en |
