Network-based Call Signaling (NCS) is a profile of the

Media Gateway Control Protocol The Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP) is a signaling and call control communication protocol used in voice over IP (VoIP) telecommunication systems. It implements the media gateway control protocol architecture for controlling media gatew ...

(MGCP) for use in

PacketCable PacketCable network is a technology specification defined by the industry consortium CableLabs for using Internet Protocol (IP) networks to deliver multimedia services, such as IP telephony, conferencing, and interactive gaming on a cable televisio ...

applications for

voice-over-IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

. A network implementing NCS is designed according to the

media gateway control protocol architecture The media gateway control protocol architecture is a methodology of providing telecommunication services using decomposed multimedia gateways for transmitting telephone calls between an Internet Protocol network and traditional analog facilities of ...

for interconnecting a packet network with the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN). This architecture physically decomposes the functionality of providing complete end-to-end multimedia telecommunication sessions into several discrete components, notably a media gateway (MG) located at the customer premises that performs the physical translation between analog voice or video streams to packetized digital data, and a media gateway controller (MGC) which is a centralized server that controls typically many media gateways and manages the complexity of call setup, resource negotiation, call routing, and tear-down. In addition, the architecture also uses signaling gateways to the traditional telecommunication channels, such as SS7-based networks. Like MGCP, NCP is a device control

protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technolog ...

defining the interaction between the MGC, also called a call agent, and its media gateways. It is one layer of the PacketCable suite of specifications and relies upon companion protocol specifications to provide complete end-to-end telecommunication functionality. Network-based Call Signaling is a modification of the Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP). NCS provides a PacketCable profile of an application programming interface (MGCI), and a corresponding protocol (MGCP) for controlling voice-over-IP (VoIP) embedded clients from external call control elements. An embedded client is a network element that provides: *Two or more traditional analog (RJ11) access lines to a packet-based telecommunication network. *Optionally, one or more video lines to a VoIP network MGCI functions provide for connection control, endpoint control, auditing, and status reporting. They each use the same system model and the same naming conventions. The modification of MGCP in the NCS profile include the following: NCS only aims at supporting PacketCable-embedded clients. Functionality present in the MGCP 1.0 protocol, which was superfluous to NCS, has been removed. It contains extensions and modifications to MGCP. However, the MGCP architecture, and all of the MGCP constructs relevant to embedded clients, are preserved in NCS. The NCS protocol contains minor simplifications of MGCP 1.0.

References

External links

* VoIP protocols {{Telecomm-stub