Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP) Version 1.0

This document describes an application programming interface and a corresponding protocol (MGCP) which is used between elements of a decomposed multimedia gateway. The decomposed multimedia gateway consists of a Call Agent, which contains the call control "intelligence", and a media gateway which contains the media functions, e.g., conversion from TDM voice to Voice over IP. Media gateways contain endpoints on which the Call Agent can create, modify and delete connections in order to establish and control media sessions with other multimedia endpoints. Also, the Call Agent can instruct the endpoints to detect certain events and generate signals. The endpoints automatically communicate changes in service state to the Call Agent. Furthermore, the Call Agent can audit endpoints as well as the connections on endpoints. The basic and general MGCP protocol is defined in this document, however most media gateways will need to implement one or more MGCP packages, which define extensions to the protocol suitable for use with specific types of media gateways. Such packages are defined in separate documents. This memo provides information for the Internet community.