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This paper studies the assimilation ofOMT, an object-oriented design method not particularly well suited for distributed applications development, into RM -ODP, a framework for distributed applications lacking a method. It reports on current work in this venture in the TINA Consortium.

In this paper, the key challenges (loss due to distance, entanglement routing, multi-commodities) for the coming quantum internet, relying on entanglement of quantum bits (for short, qubits) on top of an existing network, are analyzed. A unifying framework enabling to compare the various entanglement distribution, purification, and routing protocols published so far is presented. With regard to entanglement routing, the introduction of different time windows will be essential in order to cope efficiently with the main challenges like complex route calculation and fidelity estimation on the one hand, actual entanglement route selection and entangled photon generation on the other hand. For a roll-out on top of existing transmission networks, all the research publications for the last 20 years start to cover pretty well the global scheme. Nevertheless, open questions remain, like the actual advantage of some task execution prior to the online quantum path selection, or the design of algorithms approximating the multi-commodities flow optimization problem, or the issue of dealing with a processing time not much longer than the qubit life time.

The control and management services add new value to the telecommunications networks. As these services evolve, due to various factors like an increasing network technology diversity, increasing processing capabilities at the public periphery and reglementary acts, two trends can be observed : an externalization of the intelligence and the absence of a common technical approach between the public and private control and management systems. The objectives of this paper are to give a short state of the art of the control and management systems (intelligent networks, computer-telephony integration servers, Internet) and to highlight the benefits that would be gained by interconnecting them (i.e. providing more 'seamlessness' and building a global information network). Once the advantages explained, the paper lists the requirements that can be anticipated on this global and seamless control and management system : fine identification of the information flows, independence of the platform providers, deployment flexibility, system reusability. In order to solve most of these requirements, the telecommunication community should now agree upon a single, generic enough, software architecture. As explained brievely in this paper, TINA proves to be a good candidate, provided that more global effort is spent on its assessment and validation.