Telecommunications Essentials

Intelligent Networks

The ITU's standardization of SS7, in 1980, began the evolution toward the concept of intelligent networking. An IN includes a set of nodes that rely on widespread distribution of call-handling functions and capabilities (see Figure 5.14). Before the advent of INs, customers could have only the services and features available from their local exchanges. Their ability to demand and achieve new services from the operator was very much tied to the generation of software in the local exchange and whether it had yet incorporated the feature of interest. With INs, you can centrally place this type of service and feature logic on a node (such as an SCP), and then any switch can reach it and make use of that feature. The objective ...