Migration towards Multimedia Next Generation Network

The last years, the voice and the Internet access services have become a commodity, having as a result the offering from network providers, both fixed and mobile, a bunch of services. These developments are posing new requirements to existing networks, which are circuit based, and an evolution path is needed towards next generation networks, which allows the provision of multimedia services with guarantee quality of service. Mobile operators are facing the greatest challenges, since they have to reform their networks in order to provide data and multimedia services and the definition of the IP multimedia Subsystem (IMS) framework is one step towards that direction. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on significant issues, in terms of network architecture and protocols of multimedia next generation networks, allowing the definition of an evolution scenario of existing networks towards next generation multimedia networks.