Markku Korpi

Supplementary services in the H.323 IP telephony network

Traditionally, different networks were developed to handle voice, data, and video. The circuit-switched telephone network carried voice and the packet network carried data. Due to different deployment of these networks, different services were developed, such as voice mail in the telephone network and electronic mail on the Internet. With the revolution of multimedia in the computer industry, voice, video, and data are now being carried on both networks. Supplementary services, such as transfer and forwarding (which were originally developed for private telephone networks and later migrated to public telephone networks) are now being developed for packet networks. The standards for packet networks are being defined in the H.323-based series of ITU-T recommendations. This article provides the H.323 architecture for supplementary services, the differences in deployment of these services between the circuit-switched and packet-switched networks, and interworking of these services across hybrid networks.