• Goal of H.323 Forum Certification Activity Group
• Brief Description of the H.323 Forum Certification Process
• Certification Program Content
• Work Items
• Open Issues
• Meeting Minutes
• Next Certification Event
• Comments Regarding Certification Program

Goal of H.323 Forum Certification Activity Group

The H.323 Forum was created under IMTC (with ITU-T support) to address an industry need to promote H.323 protocol awareness and address industry issues. Major issues raised by several Voice/Video Over IP Service Providers (VVoIP) included inability to compare different H.323 vendor's products and have confidence newly introduced equipment wont break an existing network. These issues, if left unresolved, introduce the following obstacles to general H.323 VVoIP market acceptance:

• lack of technology confidence
• expensive Service Provider and vendor test labs as well as test resources
• slower product/service rollout
• ultimately delayed buying decisions

Industry interoperability events, for example IMTC SuperOp, provide some level of interoperability but are typically limited to products still in development, only test basic point to point scenarios, and do not provide certification accountability. The H.323 Forum is initiating a certification program to address the above issues. Basing requirements on ITU-T H.323 standards, H.323 Forum members have developed several certification profiles which vendors can test against. These profiles are meant to follow ITU-T H.323 standards but also select specific protocol interpretations where the standard offers alternatives or is unclear. These decision points are based on chronic interoperability issues encountered in live deployments, either by vendors or Services Providers. Depending upon the issue, the H.323 Forum may propose changes to the standards, working through ITU-T SG-16.

The profiles have been defined in levels. Level 1a and Level 1b provide requirements related to basic protocol interoperability supporting voice, video, Fax, and modem call scenarios. Level 2 related to carrier/enterprise inter-zone scenarios introduce more complex network configurations and addition security, accounting and routing requirements ("zone" as defined in ITU-T H.323 standard). Level 3 requirements, while not yet defined, will introduce more complex service interactions.

In addition to certification profiles, the H.323 Forum will also consider specific network architectures to further bound the interpretation multiples. Networks that will be considered include carrier-to-carrier, enterprise-to-enterprise, enterprise-to-carrier, and enterprise-to-carrier-to-enterprise. These network configurations introduce new network elements such as NATs, Firewalls, and proxies just to name a few.

It is planned that vendors will have the following methods to certify their products/zones:

• Self-certification - vendor(s) tests product/zone in their own facility against another certified product/zone and submits written documentation to H.323 Forum review team (only valid for Certification Levels 1a and 1b)
• H.323 Forum certification event - vendor tests product/zone during a periodic H.323 Forum certification event during which already certified equipment will be available.
• Independent third-party test company - vendor submits product/zone to third-party test company to certify equipment

Once certified, the H.323 Forum will post results on our H.323 Forum webpage. While the H.323 Forum does not accept legal liability for individual certification results, the H.323 Forum acts as governing board to define certification profiles and processes, organize test events, and make available certification levels attained by member companies.

Brief Description of the H.323 Forum Certification Process

In order to become H.323 Forum Certified, the equipment needs to satisfy H.323 Forum Certification Profile Requirements for the needed Certification Level. In order to establish the Certification Level, an entity supposed to successfully pass through all relevant tests as outlined in the appropriate Test Cases document for the particular Certification Level. Each and every subsequent Certification Level ( 1A, 1B and 2) can be attained only after successful completion of the previous Level. At the same time H.323 Forum Security Certification is independent from the particular Certification Level and can be obtained as such.

• Ratification of the H.323 Forum Certification Profile
• H.323 Forum Certification Committee
• H.323 Forum Certification Decision
• H.323 Forum Certification Record Keeping - what records, how obtained, for how long stored
• H.323 Forum Certification Documents Version Control
• Making future changes in the H.323 Forum Certification Documents

Certification Program Content

Work Items

1. Call flow Diagrams
2. PDU Content
3. L2 Test Cases

Open Issues

1. OSP Integration
2. Supplementary Services CR and TC

Meeting Minutes

Next Certification Event

Comments Regarding Certification Program

Please send any comments to Paul E. Jones at paulej@packetizer.com.