Using DMIF for abstracting from IP-telephony signaling protocols

IP Telephony recently finds a lot of attention and will be used in IP based networks and in combination with the existing conventional telephone system. There is a multitude of competing signaling protocol standards, interfaces and implementation approaches. A number of ba- sic functions can be found throughout all of those, though. This includes the addressing of participants using symbolic names, the negotiation of connections and their parameters as well as the enforcement of a dedica- ted handling of data streams by means of QoS signaling activities. Thus, a generic abstraction hiding underlying protocol specifics is very desira- ble and useful. The Delivery Multimedia Integration Framework DMIF - as part of the MPEG approach towards distributed multimedia systems - forms a general and comprehensive framework that is applicable to a wide variety of multimedia scenarios. In this paper we describe a more generalized and abstract view to basic IP Telephony signaling functions and show how these can be hidden be- low a common DMIF interface. This will allow for the implementation of inter-operable applications and a concentration on communication func- tionality rather than protocol details. We expect that this will also allow for better exchangeability, interoperability and deployability of emerging signaling extensions.