Conferencing and Transcoding
Conferencing is allowing multiple participants to join a common call. Cisco
CallManager supports two types of conferencing: ad-hoc and meet-me. In ad-hoc
conferencing, the originating caller controls the conference, and determines who
will be on the call.The participants may even continue the call after the originating
caller hangs up.A meet-me conference, meanwhile, allows participants to
join into a conference call by calling into an assigned number out of a pool of
directory numbers. More participants can continue to join the conference call
until the maximum number allowed is reached. DSP resources support both types
of conferencing, and the Cisco CallManager uses DSP resources to provide conferencing
services, as shown in Figure 6.1. In this scenario, an IP phone caller
joins another IP phone and an outside or PSTN initiated caller in a three-way
conference call.This is an example of an ad-hoc conference.The Catalyst DSP
resources are one way a Cisco CallManager is able to provide a conference
bridge.A four-way G.711 conference call would utilize four DSP resources, one
for each participant to stream into a single call.