Discussions on the IN/Internet interworking

The study of IN/Internet interworking occurred initially in the PSTN/Internet interworking (PINT) working group of the IETF. Subsequently, the ITU-T has recognized its importance. During their SG11 plenary in September of 1997, an ad hoc study group was established for studying how the PSTN/Internet interworking can be supported by the intelligent network (IN). The study includes the aspects of services, architectures, management and security. Currently, there are some architectures of the IN/Internet interworking proposed for discussion, mainly in IETF and ITU-T. However, they are still premature and several deficiencies can be found. Therefore, after a discussion of these proposals, the authors propose a new interworking scheme.