Deploying Gatekeepers

A gatekeeper is an H.323 device that can provide services such as address translation, admission control, bandwidth management, and centralized dial plan management to facilitate network scalability. Gatekeepers can provide these services for H.323 terminals, gateways, and multipoint control unit (MCU). Cisco CallManager can also take advantage of gatekeeper services.

The Cisco IOS gatekeeper feature is supported on the Cisco 2600, 3600, 3700, 2800, 3800, and 7200 families of routers using the appropriate Cisco IOS and feature license.

Although gatekeeper usage is optional, a gatekeeper can provide many benefits to improve scalability and management. It this chapter, you will learn about the benefits that gatekeepers can provide in an IP Telephony network.

This chapter helps you to do the following:

• Comprehend the terminology used when discussing gatekeepers
• Understand gatekeeper mandatory and optional functions that you can use in an IP Telephony network
• Know the protocols and signaling methods that gatekeepers use
• Be able to select appropriate hardware and software to use for gatekeeper deployments
• Learn the various deployment models that you can use to enhance scalability of a gatekeeper-controlled network
• Discover how CallManager interacts with an H.323 gatekeeper