Overview

For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

Rudyard Kipling (1865 1936)

Up to this point in the book the controlling service logic has been presented as being located (at least logically) at a single point and this has been represented by the IN SCP. The concept of remote data has been introduced with the IN SDP, but it has generally been assumed that the controlling logic that runs the service is hosted by the network operator on a single computing facility. Thus we have service-switching points, and service control points, such that an SSP might communicate with a home , or pre-assigned, SCP for its service requests. For many services, such as those described earlier, this model has proved to be sufficient. Early intelligent networking was to do with a set of discrete database nodes serving large numbers of telephone exchanges, with a reliable and intelligent signalling system in between. This ensured that the required message reached the intended destination database processor, and that the reply would be correctly returned to the originating network node.

We now look at architectures where the intelligence is no longer necessarily fixed in a single location but is allowed to be distributed across a network. The use of flexible distribution of computing functions across processor clusters, and the consequent dynamic location of service logic within a single service control point is not new. However, extending this distribution of remote intelligence across a network comprising...