Student nets major role

By Adam Gifford

A Massey University masters student, who is taking part in international research which is changing the way the telecommunications industry works, is being able to do his job more easily through Technology New Zealand's graduates in industry fellowships scheme.

David Ferry is working for SolNet, the New Zealand agent for Sun Microsystems, on JAIN (Java Advanced Intelligent Networks), an ambitious attempt to bring the "write once, run anywhere capabilities of Java to telecommunications switching networks.

Mr Ferry says to be eligible for the graduates in industry fellowships scheme, projects must involve research which should ultimately lead to the development of commercially viable products and technologies.

His work arose out of a summer job at SolNet after he had finished his bachelor of technology, majoring in computer systems engineering.

He initially looked at working on JINI, the subset of Java aimed at putting software in appliances.

"There's a big team already working on it and so much is already done, so there was not much point working there, he says. "So I interviewed customers and asked, 'What can I do?' The telcos [telecommunications companies] said they were interested.

"I'd been keeping up with IP [Internet protocols], so I thought I'd give it a go writing services to access the Internet.


Work for his masters' thesis should take about a year. Once it is completed he will continue to work in SolNet's telecommunications team, developing solutions in the Java/JAIN area.

"I can write about the bits I do which aren't commercially sensitive.


While GRIF pays his living expenses, the SolNet internship provides Mr Ferry with access to the UltraSparc workstation and telecommunications hardware he needs to do the research.

"SolNet is on the Sun WAN [wide-area network] so I can directly e-mail back to the guys in the States I'm working with, he said.

The telecommunications work is a fascinating contrast for someone coming from an Internet protocol background.

"Telco networks evolved more from an electrical engineering perspective, so there are areas where telco people have a different name which serves the same idea.

JAIN is managed through several consortiums, in which manufacturers work together to develop technology standards.

Intelligent Networks contains built-in diagnostics, management, fault tolerance and other capabilities that keep it running smoothly, as opposed to a passive or dumb network which provides raw wiring between one location and another, with little or no processing.

The telephone system is an intelligent network because telephone switches must be programmed for any new type of service. However, development is limited by incompatibilities between different manufacturers' equipment.

Network equipment providers build their solutions using proprietary "stacks based on a particular hardware platform the protocol stack vendor chooses.

Carriers are locked into the hardware, which limits their ability to buy off-the-shelf services from service providers, independent software vendors and other network equipment providers.

Mr Ferry says JAIN is being designed to allow the telecommunications software to run on any intelligent network, so telcos can choose their hardware independently of the software they want to run on it.

"It extends the benefits of Java into the telco space by allowing telecommunications providers to put Java applications - call diversion, for example - on to switches, says Mr Ferry. "Those applications can run across any type of switch.