Articles on Networking and Communication
Framework for a Highly Extensible IP Telephony System
IP telephony or Internet telephony had been used by a lot of Internet users as well as organizations and companies as a cost effective telecommunication tool. As the usage of IP telephony become wider, its role had been expanded into more than merely a communication device. Some IP phone software also provide additional services like email, file transfer, whiteboard, etc. IP phone users will value these extra services and choose the one that fulfill their needs. As a result, the IP telephony service operators and IP phone developers have to keep revising and rebuilding their program with new and exciting services. This process is undoubtedly very time consuming and costly.
This article introduces a framework to develop a highly extensible IP telephony system. A great effort had been put to carefully design each module in the system to ensure its reusability and extensibility. The key components in this system are: (1) a general phone engine specification that can be implemented using any proprietary telephony API, (2) a communication interface module that performs client/server communication in a predefined XML message, (3) service plug-in and service provider manager that allows new services to be added into the system easily. By following this framework, we will be able to develop an IP telephony system, which allows rapid development of new services into the system with the minimum amount of time.