General conference control protocol

This paper describes a protocol by which people communicating using different conference control mechanisms can be seamlessly integrated into a single conference control mechanism. A generic approach to conference control, general conference control protocol (GCCP) is proposed to support and bind formal/tightly coupled multimedia conference (ITU standardised) with the informal/loosely coupled conference (IETF based). These two types of conferences are used by two different types of community and the innate differences in the underlying architecture of IETF and ITU based conferencing makes it difficult to interoperate. The differences and the similarities of these two architectures are explored and a protocol is proposed which will interoperate between two different types of conferences. A single generic conference control system covers a range of services provided by different conference controls. Participants in different kind of conferencing with different kind of underlying architecture can use a particular type of service(s) from generic conference control which will integrate them into a single mechanism. The appropriate and relevant features of existing conference control mechanisms have been used to design a tool for conference management.