Enter Once, Share Everywhere: User Profile Management in Converged Networks

This paper surveys the kinds of profile data that are currently held in the various networks and where/how that data is stored, identifies key standards group activities working to enable profile data sharing, and proposes a data management framework (GUPster) that can be used across and within networks and organizations, to facilitate sharing of profile data to support converged services. GUPster combines ideas from the federated architecture for data integration and the Napster approach for peer-to-peer sharing, in order to satisfy the high level requirements coming from standards bodies such as 3GPP GUP and the Liberty Alliance. The paper describes how the GUPster framework can be supported, and identifies key topics for future research.