Study on a generic service description model

Attractive services will be the crucial factor in the future competition of communication service providers. While system heterogeneity and service convergence complicate the service provisioning process, there are still no common models to support early service analysis. This paper proposes an implementation and network platform independent model for service description. It consists of four elements: EP (endpoint), LI (communication link), ELR (relations between endpoints and communication links) and LR (relations between communication links). We analyze the attributes of EP and LI which are static parts of a service and present ELR and LR by directed graphs which describe all possible behavior of the service. This model contains most basic properties used for requirements analysis and service architecture design, can support arbitrary number of users and one user can communicate with others in an arbitrary way. In the end, a multimedia conference service is described to verify the practicability of this model.