Classifications

• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L12/00—Data switching networks
  • H04L12/02—Details
  • H04L12/16—Arrangements for providing special services to substations
  • H04L12/18—Arrangements for providing special services to substations for broadcast or conference, e.g. multicast
  • H04L12/1813—Arrangements for providing special services to substations for broadcast or conference, e.g. multicast for computer conferences, e.g. chat rooms
  • H04L12/1818—Conference organisation arrangements, e.g. handling schedules, setting up parameters needed by nodes to attend a conference, booking network resources, notifying involved parties
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L65/00—Network arrangements, protocols or services for supporting real-time applications in data packet communication
  • H04L65/1066—Session management
  • H04L65/1069—Session establishment or de-establishment
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L65/00—Network arrangements, protocols or services for supporting real-time applications in data packet communication
  • H04L65/1066—Session management
  • H04L65/1101—Session protocols
  • H04L65/1106—Call signalling protocols; H.323 and related
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L65/00—Network arrangements, protocols or services for supporting real-time applications in data packet communication
  • H04L65/40—Support for services or applications
  • H04L65/403—Arrangements for multi-party communication, e.g. for conferences
  • H04L65/4038—Arrangements for multi-party communication, e.g. for conferences with floor control
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M3/00—Automatic or semi-automatic exchanges
  • H04M3/42—Systems providing special services or facilities to subscribers
  • H04M3/56—Arrangements for connecting several subscribers to a common circuit, i.e. affording conference facilities
  • H04M3/567—Multimedia conference systems
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M7/00—Arrangements for interconnection between switching centres
  • H04M7/006—Networks other than PSTN/ISDN providing telephone service, e.g. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), including next generation networks with a packet-switched transport layer
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M7/00—Arrangements for interconnection between switching centres
  • H04M7/12—Arrangements for interconnection between switching centres for working between exchanges having different types of switching equipment, e.g. power-driven and step by step or decimal and non-decimal
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M7/00—Arrangements for interconnection between switching centres
  • H04M7/12—Arrangements for interconnection between switching centres for working between exchanges having different types of switching equipment, e.g. power-driven and step by step or decimal and non-decimal
  • H04M7/1205—Arrangements for interconnection between switching centres for working between exchanges having different types of switching equipment, e.g. power-driven and step by step or decimal and non-decimal where the types of switching equipement comprises PSTN/ISDN equipment and switching equipment of networks other than PSTN/ISDN, e.g. Internet Protocol networks
  • H04M7/128—Details of addressing, directories or routing tables

Definitions

• the present invention relates to a method for establishing multipoint conferences, of the type as stated in the preamble of the enclosed patent claim 1.
• the present invention relates to naming/addressing of multimedia multipoint conferences in local /wide area networks, i.e. packet switched networks, which do not provide a guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) .
• QoS Quality of Service
• the H.323 standard which describes terminals, equipment and services for multimedia communication (voice, video and data) over Local Area Networks (LANs/WANs) which do not provide a guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) is currently being specified by ITU-T.
• LANs/WANs Local Area Networks
• QoS Quality of Service
• the enclosed Figure 1 shows the interoperability of H.323 terminals in the H.323 standard.
• An H.323 Terminal is an endpoint on the local area net- work which provides for real-time, two-way communications with another H.323 terminal, Gateway, or Multipoint Control Unit. This communication consists of control, indications, audio, moving colour video pictures, and/or data between the two terminals.
• a terminal may provide speech only, speech and data, speech and video, or speech, data, and video .
• the Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) is an endpoint on the local area network which provides the capability for three or more terminals and Gateways to participate in a multipoint conference. Two terminals may also be con- nected in a point-to-point conference which may later develop into a multipoint conference.
• An H.323 Gateway is an endpoint on the local area network which provides for real-time, two-way communica- tions between H.323 Terminals on the LAN and other ITU Terminals on a wide area network, or to another H.323 Gateway.
• Other ITU Terminals include those complying with Recommendations H.310 (H.320 on B-ISDN) , H.320 (ISDN), H.321 (ATM), H.322 (GQOS-LAN) , H.324 (GSTN) , H.324M (Mo- bile), and V.70 (DSVD) .
• the Gatekeeper is an H.323 entity on the LAN that provides address translation and controls access to the local area network for H.323 terminals, Gateways, and MCUs .
• the Gatekeeper may also provide other services to the terminals, Gateways, and MCUs such as bandwidth management and locating Gateways .
• a multipoint conference is a conference between three or more terminals.
• the terminals may be on the LAN or on the Switched Circuit Network (i.e. on the PSTN or ISDN network) .
• the session/conference is given an alias name - usually a textual descriptive name, by the initiator of the conference.
• This name can be any combination of characters and numbers.
• a participant on the LAN wishes to join a conference s/he does so by contacting the MCU.
• this is accomplished by addressing the MCU's IP- address.
• the current/ongoing conferences on that MCU is then returned and displayed in textual format on the participant 's terminal.
• the participant may then join the wanted conference, either by typing in the name of the conference or possibly by double-clicking on the wanted session with the mouse.
• H.323 gateway Users on the PSTN/ ISDN network who wants to place a call into the LAN/WAN do so through an H.323 gateway.
• the user interface of a Plain Old Telephone makes it cumbersome (if not impossible) to enter an IP address or a textual name in order to establish a connection with a terminal on the LAN/WAN.
• this can be simplified by allocating an E.164 telephone number to each callable terminal in the network.
• This E.164 number allocation opens for the possibility to dial directly to a terminal in the LAN/WAN through a
• H.323 gateway Being able to dial directly to a terminal from the PSTN/ISDN network gives a more seamless interface between the different networks and opens for interaction between them on a service level (e.g. allowing for call transfers from the PSTN/ISDN network to a terminal in the H.323 network) .
• a service level e.g. allowing for call transfers from the PSTN/ISDN network to a terminal in the H.323 network
• An MCU can host maybe several hundred multipoint conferences (conference instances) on the same terminal
• IP address IP address
• EP 0 717 546-A2 (Altom et al . /AT&T Corp.) relates to a multimedia user interface for accessing a network-based multipoint meeting.
• the communication network suggested by this prior art is for example a long distance telecommunication network composed of a plurality of well known digital switching units and may contain one or more packet networks.
• the user will start the multipoint meeting procedure by starting a computer-related programme, through an appropriate application programme interface.
• no hints are given in this publication that a range of allocated telephone numbers is specifically allocated for multipoint conferences, let alone that such telephone numbers are related to packet switch networks comprising gateways and gatekeepers .
• EP 0 691 780-A2 (Biggs et al.(AT&T Corp.) relates to a multimedia conferencing system, comprising a method wherein all conferences have their own unique conference identification number.
• two first endpoint devices may dial directly to the specific multipoint conference, whereas a third endpoint device may be added via dial-out calling.
• this prior art method is related to primarily a circuit switch network, thereby giving no instructions for routing such telephone calls in a packet switch network, let alone giving any instructions for handling a multipoint control unit in such latter networks through a specifically adapted multipoint control unit.
• AU 673763 (Bohm/Alcatel N.V. ) relates to a mobile-radio network comprising a mobile switching centre which switched point-to-point connections between mobile-radio subscribers within the mobile-radio network.
• the mobile-radio subscribers may have a TN 007 telephone number which is assigned to a conference service unit, so that by dialling this number the conference service can be requested by each subscriber within the mobile-radio network PLMN, or by another network PSTN connected to this mobile-radio network, i.e. the conference-service unit is dialled like a normal mobile-radio subscriber.
• this prior art relates to a switch- ing network, i.e. having no relation to networks which generally do not support telephone services, i.e. packet switch networks which are based on a different technology.
• a main object of the present invention is to suggest a solution to the problems related to prior art as discussed in the preceding sections.
• a more specific object of the present invention is to enable participants on a PSTN/ISDN network to directly dial into a multiconference on LAN/WAN.
• Another object of the present invention is to suggest a more effective utilisation of the multipoint control unit involved in the network in question.
• a further object of the present invention is to suggest a dynamically allocated range of numbers in an MCU so as to still better utilise said MCU.
• Fig. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating a prior art network based on the H.323 standard, comprising terminals, equipment and services for multimedia communication, and illustrates the interoperability of H.323 terminals thereof.
• Fig. 2 is a schematical illustration of an embodiment of the present invention, especially related to a network which does not support telephone services.
• Fig. 1 illustrates a prior art network based on H.323 standard, comprising terminals, equipment and services for multimedia communication, and illustrates the interoperability of H.323 terminals thereof, as discussed previously.
• E.164 numbers can dynamically be allocated to a multipoint conference from this range. Users on the PSTN/ISDN network may then join a conference on the LAN simply by dialling the assigned E.164 number for the wanted conference. The number to dial have to be published to the participants by the initiator/scheduler of the conference together with the date and time to join. For a future conference, the E.164 number can be allocated when the conference is scheduled. This however, does not mean that the allocated E.164 number can not be used for other conferences in the meantime. It is all up to the scheduling mechanism of the multipoint conference unit to administer the use of the numbers.
• E.164 number which has been allocated to an MCU but which is currently not used to name a conference should be given the same indication as if s/he tried to dial a number which is not in use.
• the same solution could be used if two-stage dialling is used in the H.323 gateway. This to avoid conflicts if a conference is given an internal number which is already in use, e.g. by some user in the LAN. The number plan may then be locally managed.
• Fig. 2 illustrates schematically in more detail how embodiments of the invention can be realised.
• the multipoint alias for one conference may for example be : 66 84 12 01, which is among the specific range of telephone numbers allocated for conference instances, and being registered with the Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) .
• MCU Multipoint Control Unit

Applications Claiming Priority (3)

Publications (1)

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• 1997
  • 1997-06-11 NO NO972694A patent/NO972694L/no not_active Application Discontinuation
• 1998
  • 1998-06-04 EP EP98932637A patent/EP0993732A2/en not_active Withdrawn
  • 1998-06-04 AU AU82467/98A patent/AU8246798A/en not_active Abandoned
  • 1998-06-04 WO PCT/NO1998/000164 patent/WO1998057485A2/en not_active Application Discontinuation

Non-Patent Citations (1)

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