Research And Implementation Of Value-added Service Unified Authentication Architecture

Recently, the fast development of value-added services (VAS) has outlined their importance, and their great potentials indicate that they are going to be pillar business for operators. Because each one of the VAS platforms was constructed according to one specific type of service, and lacked of unified consideration and engineering, there have been historical problems such as dispersive customer management, incomplete prepay support, insufficient custom support, difficulties in managing nation-wide services, etc. In order to solve these problems, this dissertation proposes a value-added service authentication center (VAC) scheme, in which unified authentication architecture is provided. This scheme creates tight links between end users, core communication networks, VAS systems, billing support systems and SP applications. It manages subscription, authentication, pricing, charging, and dispersive numbers from different service platforms, so that various methods of transactions and flexible price plans can be realized. This proposal can promote the efficiency of new service deployment, reduce the operation costs, better VAS value chain together with content cooperation, integrate and strengthen the existing marketing links, improve user experience and service quality. It offers a good reference for future VAS architecture development and evolution trend.This research topic originated from the "China Unicom value-added service authentication center project". Through the analysis of the existing unsolved problems and previous experiences from the VASP (Value-added Service Platform) tryout, this study confirmed the research objectives and function requirements, and starting from there, it engineered the realization of VAC primary functions and service procedures.In this project, the author of this dissertation defined and engineered the interface specifications of peripheral network elements, designed and optimized the VAC-related access procedures, finalized the unified authentication procedure for typical VAS, and successfully included VAC within the existing VAS scope in theory.The author also participated in the construction and testing of the VAC platform, and proved in practice the feasibility of using VAC for unified authentication through testing several typical service procedures in actual network environment.Studies in this dissertation solve the problem of subscription information separating from billing information because of dispersive customer management, and thus improve the marketing capacity of combined VAS. Moreover, they improve the solution of VAS real-time charging for prepaid customers; eliminate difficulties in shifting between prepaid and postpaid price plans and shifting between brands; realize the unified customer support view and thus promote the service capacity of the customer support center; resolve nation-wide service management problems, and provide solutions for some difficulties that have long bedeviled operators, such as integrated VAS price plans, combined marketing, mass unsubscribing for recycled numbers, etc.