Two principal sets of standards are emerging for Internet telephony: H.323 from the ITU-T, and session initiation protocol (SIP) from the IETF. The advanced service architecture that comes with H.323 is rather archaic, and reminiscent of the old days of circuit-switched telephony. The one that comes with SIP is more modern, but has its share of deficiencies. While improvements are being made, alternatives are being sought. Two trends are noticeable in the search for alternatives: the return to the old and well-known intelligent network (IN) architectural framework, and the exploration of more recent approaches, such as mobile agent technology, that go beyond IN. This paper scrutinizes the trends in the search for alternatives to today's ITU-T and IETF advanced service architectures for Internet telephony. We successively review the IN-based architectures that are emerging, and the mobile agent-based architectures that are being explored. Many circuit-switched networks that adhere to the IN architectural framework have been deployed worldwide. The emerging IN-based advanced service architectures may facilitate the reuse of this installed base. They will however fall short when it comes to supporting the wide range of advanced services expected from Internet telephony. Mobile-agent-based advanced services architectures are much more promising, although the technology is not yet mature. Their inherent flexibility can easily help in exploiting to the fullest extent the host of opportunities Internet telephony brings. The return to the IN architectural framework may be economically viable in the short and medium terms. There is however no doubt that it will be imperative to go further in the long term. Mobile agent technology is certainly among the venues worth being explored for going beyond IN. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
