Web Services Methods for Communication over IP

In this paper, we study Web services methods and approaches to enable real-time communication services over IP. This approach extends Web services methodologies from service integration to a service-oriented approach for communication. In particular, we describe the generic Web service based application session management, WS-Session, the two-way full duplex Web service interaction framework, and most importantly, the development of Web service initiation protocol (WIP) which is a full featured Web service and SOA based communication framework for multimedia and voice communication over IP. We show that WIP provides a service oriented architecture which can be extended seamlessly from a P2P endpoint to an endpoint with advanced call control and switching capabilities typically requiring the assistance of a dedicated PBX. A prototype of WIP system is fully developed. Architectural design and system implementation of Web service based communication endpoints are studied and applied to realize service-oriented communication over IP. Advances of WIP indicate the beginning of a full Web service and SOA based communication paradigm that can reshape the converged communication over IP.