Interactive multimedia services over open NGN testbed

Delivering multimedia services over Next Generation Networks challenges the developers to define a unified and converged framework. However the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) defined by the 3rd Generation Partnership Projects offers basic features of such a framework, which enables the provisioning of multimedia services with quality of service and mobility support across heterogeneous networks. The Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS has recently launched the FOKUS Media Interoperability Lab (MIL) which is based on the "Open IMS Playground" testbed. MIL is as an open environment gathering all major IMS core components, and a triple play toolkit originating from own developments as well as major industry players, which can be used by academic and industrial partners for early prototyping of innovative interactive multimedia services and the related system components. This paper introduces the relevant technologies and provides an overview of the lab architecture and the relevant multimedia services at FOKUS. The validation of this architecture is demonstrated with an implementation of different enablers within the Playground as well as an adapted User Agent demonstrating the interaction of streaming and basic NGN telecommunication services.