5. MGCP architecture

The architectures proposed by H.323 and SIP are relatively similar in their organization, and provide for the integration of the entire communication chain, including terminals, signaling management and gateways.

MGCP (see Box 4) is in a different position, as it is primarily concerned with gateway architecture.

According to the MGCP vision, a gateway is made up of two parts:

• an "intelligent" part that converts signals from PSTN telephony to IP telephony;

• a "mechanical" part, which transcodes the voice.

These two parts are traditionally implemented on the same equipment, but MGCP is looking to separate them in order to factorize signal management, with the aim of reducing deployment costs.

The intelligent...