The Use of H.323 in VoIP

A Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP) is a Voice over Internet Protocol system used to handle the exchange of information and the management of a multimedia conference session. The exchange of information, known as signaling, is responsible for connecting, controlling and terminating sessions. Therefore, an MGCP protocol is used to set up, maintain and end calls between multiple points.

  A Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) is a protocol standard defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that outlines a management system for programs using real-time transmission of data through mutlicast or unicast network services in multimedia situations. Originally designed by the IETF for videoconferencing for multiple participants, the protocol is largely used in Voice over Internet Protocol applications. Despite its name, the protocol cannot guarantee real-time delivery of data, however, the RTP does compensate for jitters and can detect when data arrives out of sequence, both issues being popular in VoIP communication. In IP telephony, RTP works with a signaling protocol, such as SIP or H.323, in order to set up connections in a network.

In 1998, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) published the specification for a Session Description Protocol or SDP as a format that describes parameters for streaming media. The original IETF Proposed Standard was updated in 2006 as RFC 4566. Although the SDP was created as a feature of Session Announcement Protocol (SAP), it can be used with Real-time Transport Protocol, Real-time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), and Session Initiation Protocol, as well as a standalone protocol. Parameter negotiation, session announcement and session invitation are included in the descriptive sessions from the SDP protocol. Rather than transmit data like other types of protocols, an SDP negotiates between media type endpoints, format and properties involved. A session begins when a connection is established, and the session is terminated only after every endpoint is no longer participating.

Inter-Asterisk eXchange (IAX) is a communication protocol used to initiate user sessions, similar to an SIP, in order to transmit and control streaming media, especially in Voice over Internet Protocol calls. IAX2 (the newest version) is a preferred method because of its flexibility, as it is compatible with a variety of codecs, and jitters and lag are minimal due to trunking and multiplexing, which means the amount of bandwidth and latency are also kept at minimal levels.

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a text-based standard put in place by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and is the primary protocol for Voice over Internet Protocol services. SIP is similar to a MGCP in that it's a signaling protocol that can create, maintain and terminate sessions in IP-based networks. These sessions include multimedia conferencing and two-way phone calls. SIP protocol can run on User Datagram Protocol (UDP), Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) because it was created to function independently from the underlying Transport Layer as an Application Layer.