Diameter and the Internet

Diameter and the Internet

Diameter as the primary control and AAA protocol in the telecom arena, is something most of you will shift a bit in your chair but will agree is around the corner.
What about Diameter as the primary AAA protocol in the Internet ? well this is something that might require a bit more imagination (and wider chair).
(OK now take a deep breath) I personally believe there is no other alternative and this is not so far away.

The Internet and the telecom environment are moving closer – FMC, Convergence, unified subscriber databases, mobile operators becoming ISP’s, death of the telecom walled garden and NGN are some of the reasons. Convergence and FMC don’t end up in the flyers and marketing brochures, it goes down beneath the hood, to the wires – to the signaling – to Diameter.

New services – The Internet is shifting, new services are being introduced by ISP’s – few examples are gambling, multimedia, VoIP, QoS, Ads – those require a bit more than the current RADIUS AAA signaling of user name and password used today. ISP’s want it all, they want advanced pre/post billing, insured QoS for SIP and VoIP services, content based billing and so on.

Standard bodies – last but not least, did you know that Diameter was initially defined for the Internet by IEEE ? so this is a good start – Diameter is not seen by the IEEE Internet gurus as another “strange telco feature” that the strange guys in 3GPP and TISPAN want them to adopt . Also there is a lot of ongoing work in IEEE and other standard bodies in this direction(such as the Diameter SIP Application)

Those are some of the reasons why I believe Diameter is on a solid path to become the leading AAA and Control protocol in the Internet arena.
Now if I managed to convince you, the next question is When ?