H.323 UUIE PDU

Nehru, Archana archie at trillium.com
Thu Mar 15 18:01:45 EST 2001


hi all,

I have a question about the encoding of the UUIE PDU that is sent by an
endpoint to its GateKeeper through an IRR message.

Suppose we have the following scenario:

EP1
(v3)-----------------------------GK(v3/v2)----------------------------------
----EP2(v2)

Here Ep1 is a version 3 client, Gk could either be v3 or V2. Ep2 is version
2.

Now if EP1 sends out a UUIE PDU to the GK for all incoming messages from
EP2, is it supposed to encode them as version 3 messages or version 2
messages?
.
The issue here is that the messages from EP2 will not contain V3 fields, so
EP1 can forward the message coming from EP2 to the GK in one of the
following ways:

1) EP1 forwards the EXACT copy of message coming from EP2. This obviously
means that
    EP1 will forward a "version 2" message as a UUIE to the GK. Note that
this means the GK gets an
    incoming version 2 message inspite of knowing that EP1 is a version 3
endpoint.

2) EP1 does not send an EXACT COPY of messages coming from EP2 as part of
UUIEs.
   This means that EP1 decodes the v2 message from EP2, re-encodes it as a
version 3 message and then
    sends this out to the GK. So the "information content" of the message
sent to the Gk is the same as in
   the incoming PDU from EP2, but the message sent is version3.


 E.g: let us say  EP2 sent a SETUP message to EP1, so its ASN part does not
contain version 3 fields like
    "maintain connection" or "multipleCalls". So EP1 can do the following as
indicated above:

For choice 1(mentioned above):
---------------------------------
It will forward the same SETP UUIE  to Gk

For Choice 2 (mentioned above):
-------------------------------------
It will encode the incoming version 2 message as a version 3 message , i.e
it will encode "maintain connection" and "multiple calls" BUT set their
values to FALSE. This means that the information delivered to the Gk is the
same( maintain connection or multiple calls not supported).

The point to clarify here is  whether :
1) it is acceptable that a GK sees a version 3 endpoint (EP1) sending out a
version 2 message?
2) it is acceptable to GK that the EP1 has actually converted a version 2
message in to a version 3 message (choice no 2)?

Pros and Cons of choice 1 and Choice 2:
-----------------------------------------------------------
With choice 1,  EP1 has to have logic for generating all backward compatible
messages (e.g: if EP1 is a V4 endpoint, it should be capable of "encoding a
v1, v2 and v3 message also. As the versions increase, this may become
cumbersome to implement.

With choice 2, EP1 can have the logic of encoding messages only for version
3. But the disadvantage here is that EP1 has to fill in values corresponding
to all the fields added for version 3 in order to convert a version2 into a
version 3 message. Also it is possible to fill corresponding values for
fields that are "BOOLEANs" , but
it may not be possible to fill "dummy values" for all "non-BOOLEAN" fields.
E.g:what if the new fields added in version 3 is an integer? what dummy
values will the GW fill in the version 3 message ?

So the question here is , which one of the above choices is correct? My
guess is choice 1) works better. Is that right? Any answers are greatly
appreciated.

-Archana

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