ANNEX A. European IP Telephony Projects:Evolute, SURFWorks, VC Stroom

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[IP Telephony Cookbook] / Appendix A European IP Telephony Projects

Appendix

European IP Telephony Projects

A . 1 Evolute

http://evolute.intranet.gr

The Evolute project addresses the issue of supporting multimedia services in general and SIP-

based Voice over IP service in particular in heterogeneous networking environments.The focus

here is on supporting secure access to such services regardless of the used access authentication

technology. In this context, a SIP platform was enhanced with acAAA functionalities as well as

gateways to SMS and Jabber and user credentials saved in SIM cards were used for authentication

of the user.The project finished in 01.2004.

A . 2 6NET

http://www.6net.org

6NET is a three-year European project to demonstrate that continued growth of the Internet can

be met using new IPv6 technology. It also aims to help European research and industry play a

leading role in defining and developing the next generation of networking technologies. In the

context of Voice over IP, the 6NET partners are deploying and experimenting with Voice over IP

solutions, both SIP and H.323, using IPv6.This work involves porting of open source Voice over

IP solutions such as the SIP Express Router to IPv6, provisioning of components to allow

transparent Voice over IP communication between IPv4 and IPv6 networks and finally testing and

deploying SIP and H.323 IPv6 capable components over a European wide IPv6 network.

The project will be finished in 12.2004.

A . 3 Eurescom P1111 (Next-Gen open Service Solutions over IP

(N-GOSSIP)

http://www.eurescom.de/public/projects/P1100-series/P1111/default.asp

This project was funded by various telecommunication companies in Europe including Deutsche

Telecom,Telecom Italia, Elisa Communication, OTE and France Telecom.The major goal of the

project was to investigate the major problems hindering a vast and fast deployment of SIP such

as QoS and NAT traversal, provisioning of intelligent services over SIP and demonstration of

SIP -based services.The project finished in 2001.

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[IP Telephony Cookbook] / Appendix A European IP Telephony Projects

A . 4 HITEC

The project HITEC (H.323-based IP Telephony Control) have dealt with the planning, the

implementation and the prototyping of `PBX VoIP', a managing system for the packet voice

communication into an administratively, homogeneous Voice over IP network.The project aims to

the design an intelligent `PABX VoIP' system, which includes the functions of the H.323 terminal,

the MCU system and the H.323-PSTN gateway in a `GateKeeper Brain' functional element.

The prospective of an integration of telephone- and Web-based services enabled by the new

technology. `Voice over IP' has produced the realisation of various commercial equipments

offering the voice/data integration at different levels; the peculiar feature of these solutions is that

they are in compliance with the standards in a more-or-less pronounced manner. In this

framework, the HITEC project, carried out by META center of Consorzio Pisa Ricerche

(http://www.meta.cpr.it and funded by Fondazione Cassa Risparmio di Pisa

(http://www.fondazionecaripisa.it/), aims to design a `PABX VoIP' system, which

includes the functions of the H.323 terminal, the MCU system and the H.323-PSTN gateway.

Besides these, the system is characterised by the addition of `gatekeeper' traditional management

functions, new auxiliary functions in an entity denoted as `GateKeeper Brain' (GKB).

These new functions are necessary to support the H.323 entity in the implementation of services

either already defined in the H.323 systems, such as the supplementary services of the H.450

series, or services not yet standardised.The innovative approach of the HITEC project is the

realisation of a PABX VoIP prototype in compliance with the H.323 standard, and characterised

by limited hardware requirements (a simple PC with Linux O.S. and cards needed for the

implementation of the gateway and GKB functions).These features should permit to the designed

prototype to provide, at lower cost, the same functions as commercial systems already present in

the market (legacy PABX or VoIP architectures, often based on proprietary solutions), to

guarantee the interoperability with system-compliant to H.323 standard, and to make available a

platform where users can develop new services exploiting the voice and data integration. An

example of such integration is the introduction of call-centre services for supporting traditional

Web-based services such as home banking and electronic commerce.This enhancement permits

to the service operators to offer vocal support, which can give an important added value to the

customer.

The project aims also at overcoming the limits of the H.323 architecture maintaining one rigid

adhesion to the standard mechanisms, thanks to the introduction of new control centres of the

H.323 zones.The intelligence of H.323 architecture is distributed on the gatekeepers, whose

management operations (authorisations management of the H.323 clients, accounting of the calls,

etc.) are not detailed by the H.323 standard.Thus, at the state-of-the-art, the implementations of

gatekeepers is characterised either by a rather ingenuous management plan (for example, it is not

possible to insert policy on the customers enabled to register themselves or to use the

communication services), or by proprietary control architectures (an example is the AVVID

architecture of the Cisco Systems).

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[IP Telephony Cookbook] / Appendix A European IP Telephony Projects

The innovative contribution of this project is the definition of a system where the management

functions (the `GKB') are located.The GKB is defined in order to increase the flexibility and the

capillarity of the management plane of the VoIP architecture while maintaining compatibility

with the H.323 standards. In the project vision, the gatekeeper interacts with the GKB and

depends on it for whichever decision related to the normal procedures of H.225/H.245

protocols.The transfer of some typical functions of gatekeeper in the auxiliary subsystem GKB

and their integration with management function of the H.323 zone produces two main

advantages:

- Access to the management system (configuration, logging or accounting procedures) is allowed

to several client levels (administrator or normal client), without influencing the standard

mechanisms of the gatekeeper, by means of disparate management interfaces (e.g.,Web

interface);

- The subsystem GKB constitutes an interaction point among H.323 zones allowing the

improvement of inter-zone communication processes.

The realisation of the PABX VoIP system is based on the approach of open architecture

`Openh323', on platform IA32 with Linux O.S., according to the paradigm application/server.

The advantages of this solution are the high reliability, flexibility and robustness of the Linux O.S.

and in the perfect conformity to the H.323 standards implemented by the Openh323 library.

Furthermore, this library constitutes a powerful development environment of H.323 applications,

and, therefore, it is considered, not only by academic and standardisation entity, but, above all, by

several manufacturers.

A . 5 The GRNET/RTS project

http://rts.grnet.gr

The Greek Research Network (GRNET) has been developing central videoconferencing services

at the national level for the academic and research community.The main points of action of the

project are: a scheduling interface for facilitating the organisation of meetings through automated

invitations to conferences and for managing MCU and Gateway resource reservation.The Web

interface is based on Apache/PHP/MySQL/LDAP. Authentication mechanisms for securing

endpoint participation in specific, scheduled meetings are applied.The techniques involve

gatekeeper interaction with RADIUS, MySQL, and LDAP, as well as the Cisco MCM GKAPI

which has been explored as a means of controlling ARQs targeting scheduled MCU calls from

legitimate, registered participants. Also, limited SNMP management of MCU conferences through

a Web interface has been implemented.

A . 6 SURFWorks

http://www.surfnet.nl/innovatie/surfworks/voip

The SURFnet project called `SURFWorks' has a component to stimulate the use of Voice over IP

and VC, obtain knowledge and disseminate it and provide an H.323 and SIP service.

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A . 7 VC Stroom

http://www.surf.nl/projecten/index2.php?oid=136

VC Stroom is a project of multiple institutions in the Netherlands to promote the use of VC in

the educational setting.

A . 8 Voice services in the CESNET2 network

http://www.cesnet.cz/english/project/iptelephony

The CESNET IP Telephony project started in 1999 with the goal of investigating the possibilities

of data and voice network convergence. CESNET operates the Czech NREN. A lot of

experience was acquired about the optimal interconnection configurations of various telephony

devices (PBXs with different interfaces, voice gateways, gatekeepers, IP phones, etc.). It turned out

that most popular IP Telephony service has been least-cost routing. Over time, the 24 PBXs in

universities and research institutes have been interconnected over the Czech NREN with two

gateways to PSTN.The network structure is illustrated in Figure A.1.

Figure A.1. CESNET IP Telephony Network

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