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An Introduction to H.323
Multipoint Controller Units (MCUs)
consists of a required multipoint controller (MC) and
an optional multipoint processor or processors (MP). The MC is the conference controller.
The MC handles negotiation between all terminals to determine common capabilities and
controls conference resources such as multicasting. The MC does not deal directly with any
of the media streams. This is left to the MP, which does the mixing, switching, and other
processing of audio, video, and/or data bits.
Terminals, gateways and MCUs are also known as H.323 endpoints. The collection of all
terminals, gateways, and MCUs managed by a single gatekeeper comprise an H.323 Zone.
Between H.323 and H.320
H.320 is the ITU standard for video conferencing over digital lines like ISDN. The standard
describes recommendations for both multipoint and point-to-point video conferencing over
circuit-switched networks (CSNs).
If you want your H.323 LAN endpoints to communicate with H.320 terminals on circuit-
switched networks without actually connecting each LAN endpoint to an ISDN line, you
need a gateway that converts between these protocols.
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