Hi Everyone:

In addition, I am sending a revised abstract of the proposed contribution as follows:

Abstract

A large H.323 network may consist of multiple zones. A H.323 zone can be physical or logical. H.323 signaling messages such as location, zone, admission, bandwidth, discovery, registration, and others may have to travel multiple gatekeepers between the source-destination path because the first receiving gatekeeper may have to send to other gatekeepers to process these messages.

This contribution facilitates the inter-gatekeeper communications with distributed gatekeeper architecture through extension of the existing H.323 signaling messages. Three new fields that need to be used to extend the signaling message sets are pathValue, endpointType, and gatekeeperIdentifier. This simple extension in the H.323 signaling message set will satisfy the needs for inter-gatekeeper communications. The source gatekeeper will route the message to destination gatekeeper knowing the address table for the destination entities it serves. However, it is left up to the implementation of the lower network layer how the routing capabilities (e.g., intradomain and interdomain routing protocols) to be used between the gatekeepers to route the messages since every gatekeeper will have a network level address, and the routing scheme between the gatekeepers have not been addressed in this contribution. The proposed inter-gatekeeper communications model is expected to provide scalability in view of the large-scale H.323 network. In addition, this contribution not only complements the existing H.323 signaling message sets, it also complements all other schemes that have been proposed so far for the inter-gatekeeper communications.

Regards,

Radhika R. Roy AT&T

  ----------
  From:   Roy, Radhika R, ALTEC
  Sent:   Monday, August 17, 1998 6:14 PM
  To:     'Mailing list for parties associated with ITU-T Study Group

16' Subject: RE: Contribution (Inter-GK Communications)

          Hi Everyone:

          The AT&T contribution - "Inter-Gatekeeper Communications

with Distributed Gatekeeper Architecture of Multiple Zones" is also intended for discussions in our biweekly H.323 ITU-T SG16 inter-GK meetings.

          Thanks and regards,

          Radhika R. Roy
          AT&T


          ----------
          From:   Roy, Radhika R, ALTEC
          Reply To:       Mailing list for parties associated with

ITU-T Study Group 16 Sent: Friday, August 14, 1998 5:51 PM To: ITU-SG16@MAILBAG.INTEL.COM Subject: Contribution (Inter-GK Communications)

          <<File: nh_gkx2.doc>>
          Hi Everyone:

           <<nh_gkx2>>

          The AT&T contribution - "Inter-Gatekeeper Communications

with Distributed Gatekeeper Architecture of Multiple Zones" is enclosed here for the ITU-T SG16 meeting to be held in Geneva (September'98).

          Thanks and regards,

          Radhika R. Roy
          AT&T
          Room 1K-330
          101 Crawfords Corner Road
          Holmdel, NJ 07733, USA
          Tel: (732) 949 8657
          Fax: (732) 949 8569
          Email: rrroy@att.com