The video conference service in an intelligent broadband network: design, load balancing and performance analysis in the control plane

The integration between the intelligent network (IN) and the B-ISDN is envisaged as a promising solution for the support of broadband multimedia services. The INSIGNIA project (EU ACTS program) has specified and developed a prototypal IN/B-ISDN integrated system. In this paper some different options for an IN/B-ISDN interaction are discussed. The provision of a typical future multimedia service, the broadband video conference is described and a generic modeling methodology for the performance evaluation of the control plane is presented. The performance methodology provides insights into the behavior of the system under dynamic conditions and captures the influence of alternative functional settings.