Network and control platforms

The Internet as the largest global recognized communication system is in constant change and evolves in dimensions of technology, capacity, availability and size continuously since its beginnings in the late 1960's. The openness and its continuous change became characteristics of the Internet nowadays, but were no available in its origins. This chapter presents an overview about the telecommunication network and control platform evolution from classic fixed Circuit-Switched (CS) on to current fixed and mobile Next-Generation-Networks (NGN) towards future networks trends. Furthermore the Fixed-Mobile-Covergence (FMC) is presented and technology specific details are presented exemplarily.