27 October 2006

You've heard of Skype, Cisco, and Asterisk and their VoIP products. Now, get the scoop on their proprietary VoIP protocols and how they interact with other, non-proprietary and open-source protocols.

My recent column on Voice over IP (VoIP) protocols covered the major players: H.323, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Megaco (H.248), Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP), and RTP. What we didn't cover were proprietary VoIP protocols such as the peer-to-peer VoIP protocols used by Skype, the Skinny Client Control Protocol (SCCP, also known as "Skinny") used by Cisco, and the Inter-Asterisk Exchange (IAX) protocol used by Asterisk. This week, we'll take a look at these and other proprietary protocols used in various vendors' implementations of VoIP