U2C2 Gateway Mediating Incompatible UCC Systems
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Solution Overview
Problem
Communications systems with incompatible protocols cannot interoperate, limiting cross-system interactions and preventing users from communicating across different unified communications and collaboration (UCC) platforms.
Innovation Solution
A universal UCC gateway that mimics the protocol suite of incompatible systems, enabling communication by translating and normalizing media between them, and actively pulling endpoints into sessions without requiring changes to the third-party systems or their endpoints.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a universal UCC gateway is deployed to enable communication between incompatible systems, then cross-system interoperability is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal UCC gateway that acts as an intermediary between incompatible communication systems. The gateway translates and normalizes media between different protocols, enabling communication without requiring changes to the endpoint systems themselves. This mediator approach resolves the technical contradiction by centralizing the complexity in the gateway while maintaining simplicity at the endpoints.
Solution Approach 2:
The gateway is designed with multi-functional capabilities to handle multiple protocol suites and communication standards simultaneously. It can normalize media from various sources (audio, video, data) and translate between different UCC protocols, making a single device capable of interfacing with multiple incompatible systems through standardized internal processing.
2Adaptability or versatility
If protocol translation and media normalization are implemented in the gateway, then communication compatibility is improved, but processing overhead increases
Solution Approach 1:
The gateway performs media normalization and protocol translation in advance before media transmission occurs. By pre-processing media to a standardized internal format and establishing protocol mappings beforehand, the system reduces real-time processing overhead during actual communication sessions.
Solution Approach 2:
The gateway creates and maintains copies of protocol specifications and media format definitions for different systems. These pre-loaded protocol stacks and media templates allow the gateway to perform translations by referencing stored templates rather than generating translations from scratch during each communication session, reducing processing overhead.
Data Source
AI summary
An improved system and method are disclosed for enabling unified communications and collaboration (UCC) communications between incompatible communication systems. For example, the method may include using a universal UCC (U2C2) gateway in a first system to establish a connection with a server in a second system. The U2C2 gateway mimics a behavior defined for use within the second system when communicating with the server in order to be compatible with the second system. The U2C2 gateway notifies a multipoint control unit (MCU) within the first system of the connection. The MCU manages the UCC session and recognizes the U2C2 gateway as the source and destination for communications corresponding to the connection. The U2C2 gateway normalizes media received from the second system for compatibility with the first system before sending the media to the MCU for the UCC session. The U2C2 gateway also normalizes media received from the MCU for compatibility with the second system before sending the media to the second system.