Overview

Over the last few years, operators have begun the biggest technological change in telephone history: the evolution of the telephone network to an Internet Protocol (IP) backbone. This evolution has changed the way we use communications and will continue to change every aspect of how we communicate.

Perhaps the biggest impact will be how our networks operate and what services will be offered. While this may not seem like the subject for this book, it does have a profound impact on Signaling System 7 (SS7). Ironically, there are also some similarities in what is driving the change in network architecture to what drove the industry to implement SS7 the need for new, robust, and powerful services that end users could control themselves. While that promise was never fulfilled through the Intelligent Network (IN), it is quickly being realized with Voice-over-IP (VoIP).

I added this chapter as an overview of what is to become the signaling network beginning now. This is not futuristic because many networks are already beginning their migration. Many more networks have been launched based solely on VoIP technology. This is a movement that I have been involved in since I began my career in data communications and then later in telephony. The convergence of voice and data has finally come to realization, and it is looking more and more like the Internet. But this does not come without hurdles.

As the telephone networks of the world began to adopt the Transmission Control Protocol