Open IMS Playground - At a Glance

The Open IMS Playground is OPEN in a sense that it is in a constant process of evolving. It is open to new partners, new components, new technologies, as well as new concepts and paradigms. It is IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) centric. This means that it contains the latest IMS technology, conforms to the latest IMS specifications, and generally reflects the current state of the art in the field of IMS.

It is a PLAYGROUND. We see a Playground as a technology focused test environment, where we can “play” around with the latest technology. However, this is more than something to toy around with. It is a mature testbed, a test laboratory, where benchmarking, conformance tests and interoperability tests are carried out for our partners, and where components resulting from own development can be deployed and operated.

Driven by market needs and our partner’s requirements, the Open IMS Playground has evolved to a known test laboratory which is used in many national and international projects from industry and academia.

Around the Playground we offer services such as prototyping, proof-of-concept implementations, benchmarking and consulting.

The Playground includes an Open Source Project ‘OpenIMSCore’ which focuses on the development of the IMS core network (HSS and CSCFs). The modular structure of the IMS allows full or particular deployment of the OpenIMSCore components, which allows interoperability test of new components against the OpenIMSCore.

Based on this Open Source Initiative we offer the instantiation of a full IMS Playground in your organization. Fuelled with add-on components, interconnection to the Open IMS Playground, and our experience, you can benefit from the potential of an own IMS test environment located at your own facilities.

In summer 2007 FOKUS has opened the Open SOA Telco Playground [LINK SOA], an open testbed for experiencing and validating the development, provisioning, execution, and management of converging Next Generation Network (NGN) and Future Internet Applications based on SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) principles.

Beginning of 2010 Fraunhofer FOKUS came up with the FUture SEamless Communication (FUSECO) Playground [LINK FUSECO], an open testbed for Next Generation Mobile Networks based on the OpenEPC [link: OPENEPC] toolkit. The FUSECO playground consists of various mobile radio network technologies, the core network Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and single services or complex service delivery platforms.

A transition from circuit-switched (CS) to packet-switched (PS) mobile networks motivates the usage of IMS for providing voice over LTE in operator networks. FOKUS as member in the ETSI IMS Network Testing (INT) group develops IMS&EPC interoperability test specification in the STF 414.

FOKUS is technical partner of the 4th IMS Plugtests [LINK PLUGTEST] in November 2011 in Berlin, Germany during which international operators and vendors are going to perform interoperability tests based on 3GPP R8.