Distributed Broker-Agent Architecture for Multimedia Communications Traversing NAT／Firewall in NGN

The forthcoming Next Generation Network (NGN) is an all IP network. Multimedia communications over IP networks are a type of bundled session communications, which cannot directly traverse Network Address Translations (NATs) and firewalls even in NGN. To solve the problem that the existing traversal methods are not suitable for service providers to set up a real system in NGN,a Distributed Broker-agent Architecture (DBA) is addressed. DBA is secure and realizable for service providers and enterprises because it is easy to set up and does not need to upgrade the existing devices like Firewalls, NATs or endpoint devices of subscribers.DBA is composed of two-layer distributed agents, the server proxies and the client agents, in which all multimedia communications use shared tunnels to carry signaling messages and media data between broker-agents, and the call signaling is encrypted over Security Socket Layer (SSL) to guarantee the security of calling. Moreover, the function model and multiplexed connection messages format of DBA are designed, which lays a basis for the protocol in the future NGN. In addition, a simple implementation based on H.323 verifyies the main function of traversing firewalls and NATs.

Distributed Broker-Agent Architecture for Multimedia Communications Traversing NAT/Firewall in NGN

The forthcoming Next Generation Network (NGN) is an all IP network. Multimedia communications over IP networks are a type of bundled session communications, which cannot directly traverse Network Address Translations (NATs) and firewalls even in NGN. To solve the problem that the existing traversal methods are not suitable for service providers to set up a real system in NGN, a Distributed Broker-agent Architecture (DBA) is addressed. DBA is secure and realizable for service providers and enterprises because it is easy to set up and does not need to upgrade the existing devices like Firewalls, NATs or endpoint devices of subscribers. DBA is composed of two-layer distributed agents, the server proxies and the client agents, in which all multimedia communications use shared tunnels to carry signaling messages and media data between broker-agents, and the call signaling is encrypted over Security Socket Layer (SSL) to guarantee the security of calling. Moreover, the function model and multiplexed connection messages format of DBA are designed, which lays a basis for the protocol in the future NGN. In addition, a simple implementation based on H.323 verifyies the main function of traversing firewalls and NATs.