t this requires some distribution of management functions and entities. The distribution is performed between the network and the terminal, allowing centralized and/or autonomous management. It also addresses the need to handle different type of terminals, ranging from intelligent to dumb, which require maintenance functions on the network with different degrees of assistance. The cooperation in management functions requires the existence of management proto- cols between network and terminals. Compare the CC/PP protocol, described in Chapter 7, Section 7.5.1. Management from Terminals A modern trend in telecommunication business is to allow and favour the end-user con- figuration of different services and network attributes. This provides extreme agility on service provisioning. The end user can also choose tailor-made solutions, selected from a defined menu of alternatives, on service implementation. This is an increasing trend that will be subject to further development, to provide additional configuration facilities to the end users. This can be done either through the corresponding network and its traditional terminals, or via dedicated terminals capable of more complex configuration capabilities and information interchange. Typical existing examples regarding this last case are operator's Internet pages, which allow service selection and configuration to the end users. 16.11 ACCESS NETWORK MANAGEMENT The access networks are often decisive for the overall service quality. Access is one of the most dynamic areas in telecommunications today, showing a strong growth, involving high levels of investments (often more than 50 % of the overall investment cost) and a myriad of promising technologies. Solutions for the 'last mile' to the subscriber have been a constant subject of debate in telecommunication forums for a long time. Figure 16.24 describes a very likely state in the network development, where the core backbone will have to interconnect with many different types of access networks. This is what 'Agnostic