Media Gateway Controller

A Media Gateway Controller (MGC) is a system that in particular Voice over IP network is used. An MGC controls a number of media gateways or media servers. The MGC receives signaling information ( such as eg. Dialing digits ) from the Media Gateway and is used as an intelligent entity in the Internet telephony ( IP telephony ) for call control. There are several protocols that are used between a MGC and a media gateway, wherein also known as the primary protocol, the Media Gateway Control Protocol ( MGCP ) and H.248 and Megaco used.

The Media Gateway Controller (MGC ) is also called the Call Agent and is the core component of a softswitch. In it, the signaling of Session Initiation Protocol ( SIP) to the IP world is converted into a D-channel for ISDN signaling.

The control protocols

• The Media Gateway Control Protocol ( MGCP ), is a standard protocol which is required for the handling of signaling and session management for a multimedia conference. The protocol defines a means for communication between a media gateway that the required data conversion into a format for a circuit- switched network (such as a packet-switching network ), and the media gateway controller performs.

• The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP ) is a network protocol for setting up, controlling and terminating a communication session between two or more participants. The protocol is specified in RFC 3261, among others. In the IP telephony SIP is a commonly used protocol.

• The H.323 protocol is a protocol of the H.32x series, which also contains the public telephone networks and communication via ISDN. However, this is less and less used.

Other Features

Is the media gateway for converting voice from the TDM network to an IP network, in addition the functionality of a signaling gateway is required, since the connection is established in a traditional TDM network is always preceded by the transmission of signaling data and only on the functionality of the signaling gateway can be interpreted.