SIP-based Protocol for P2P Large-Scale Multiparty VoIP (mvoip) Conference Support

Even if both traditional centralized and decentralized models can support small conferences, their deployment for large number of participants is less obvious. In fact, while server-based centralized conference facilitates control and administration operations, supporting centralized media processing in large scale conference causes system overhead on the mixer. On the other hand, decentralized solutions that use multi end-system media processors will introduce an overhead to control conference floors and users membership. Our solution introduces a new model that enable multi-host media process support while the conference control and management is kept simplified and centralized around the administrator. To do that, we build two different meshed networks to enable both voice audio distribution between participants and general conference control. Our conference system includes different components that enable conference creation/destruction, user addition/removal, media assignment and speech floor control. We introduce an abstract protocol message that implements membership operations. We also discuss the implementation of system components and we detail their mapping to SIP.