NTECH Activity Report 2018-2019

Chairman: Bruno Chatras, Orange

Currently, most of us have an email address and a separate telephone number. Replacing these in the future with a single alphanumeric address may be more convenient for end users – but it creates fresh interconnection challenges for network service providers. 

As part of this work, ETSI’s Network Technologies committee (TC NTECH) helps specify network solutions, including the development of future networks and Cloud standardization. The committee is responsible for the standardization of detailed architecture and protocol specifications for use in networks, spanning service interconnection and network interconnection as well as future networks technologies.

In 2018 the committee progressed a new Technical Report examining options other than telephone number mapping (ENUM) for number portability and considered actual use cases.

The second main area of activity was automatic management, developed by our Working Group on Evolution of Management towards Autonomic Future Internet (WG NTECH AFI). A Technical Specification (TS) defining Generic Autonomic Network Architecture (GANA) as an architectural reference model for autonomic networking, cognitive networking and self-management was published. The ETSI Specialist Task Force (STF 501 PHY2) under TC NTECH finalized a report on the application of the GANA reference model onto the Broadband Forum architecture.

WG NTECH AFI was also involved in the development of a Technical Report (TR) outlining the business drivers for autonomic networking, together with another TR providing guidelines to instantiating the ETSI Generic Autonomic Networking Architecture (GANA) reference model onto target implementation-oriented reference architectures. In relation to this, autonomicity and self-management in the IP Multi-media Subsystem (IMS) architecture was studied, developing a TR on the instantiation of the GANA reference model onto the IMS architecture. Together with EC-funded WISHFUL Project WG NTECH AFI worked on the Technical Report (TR) providing a mapping and evaluation of architectural components for autonomic network management and control developed/implemented in the EC-funded WISHFUL Project to the ETSI NTECH AFI Generic Autonomic Networking Architecture (GANA) model.

During 2018, NTECH AFI activities were formally transferred to TC INT.