The Feature Interaction Problem in the IN: In search of a global solution

Telecommunication operators are looking for new types of services to be introduced in multimedia networks. It is a good way to speed up the design of such networks and to raise the reliability and the efficiency of the actual telecommunication networks. During the last years, new types of services were introduced by the bell operating companies around the world. The toll free number is a key service that first permitted to realize that the introduction of new services in classical telecommunication networks is a difficult task. Ever more logical concepts and less and less physical attachment are needed to bring up more flexibility in the telecommunication network architecture to be able to take in charge new services. The Intelligent Network (IN) as a distributed system working in real time is particularly complex to design and to manage. The purpose of our article is to give a general overview of the feature interactions problem considered as one of the main problem in the IN.