Optimization of Signaling Traffic in Centralized Conferences using SIP

Multiparty conferencing is becoming an important topic in the next generation networks. An essential part of multiparty conferencing is the signaling protocol, which has to establish, modify, update and terminate conferencing sessions. This paper focuses on signaling for closed centralized conferencing using Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and proposes an approach that achieves an optimization of signaling traffic on the conference server. The presented approach also improves fault tolerance of centralized conferences by preventing the conference server from being a single point of failure. The results obtained with this optimization are also presented. Key-Words: multipoint conferencing, signaling, SIP, conference server, traffic optimization, fault tolerance