OPAL Version 3.10.4

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Terms used in the inline documentation

This list of terms is an attempt to provide a non circular list of the names and ideas frequently used in the inline documentation. Once you have read and understood these terms, the inline documentation will make more sense.

- manager - supervises the instances of endpoints in a running application. Typically, there is one manager instance in an application, which will maintain the H323EndPoint, SIPEndPoint and IAX2EndPoint class. The application will (almost always) create a descendant of the OpalManager so as to gain access to the event handling and notification methods of Opal. The manager maintains a list of all active calls, with a list of instances of the OpalCall class.

- endpoint - supervises the handling of all calls with the same protocol. There is (typically) one H323EndPoint class instance that handles all H323 calls.

Note that OpalEndPoint is ancestor of all endoint classes. H323EndPoint, SIPEndPoint, IAX2EndPoint are all extensions of the OpalEndPoint class.

- connection - supervises the call signaling and media control for a protocol. Consequently, the OpalConnection class will manage the "calling" of a peer as well as the negotiation on what form of media is to flow between them.

Note that OpalConnection is ancestor of all connection classes. H323Connection, SIPConnection, IAX2Connection are all extensions of the OpalConnection class.

- OpalCall - this contains information for one voip call. Consequently there is one instance of the OpalCall class for every active voip call. Once a call has completed, this class (and those with some part of running this call) are destroyed. A call always consists of two or more connections.

- partyA - the name given to the first connection instance created to handle a call. Thus, if we receive an incoming H323 call from a remote endoint, partyA will be assigned to a H323Connection instance.

- partyB - the name given to the second connection instance created to handle a call. For the example above where partyA is used to make a H323 call, and assuming the sound goes to the computer's speaker, partyB will be an instance of the OpalPCSSConnection class.

The association of party A and party B may be explicit through the OpalManager::SetUpCall() function or implicitly through an internal routing engine. Suppose all incoming phone calls are to be directed out as a H323 call. In this case, partyA will be a OpalLineConnection instance as we needed something to handle the incoming call. The routing engine decides that since all phone calls go out as H323 calls, a H323Connection is created to handle the outgoing side. Consequently, partyB is (for this example) an instance of the H323Connection class.

- local - describes the first "inside" of an OpalConnection instance. As noted above, an OpalConnection instance is used to supervise/manage the signaling and media selection of a protocol. Further, it was noted that a call consists of two or more OpalConnection instances. The local side of an OpalConnection refers to the side of the OpalConnection that is internal to Opal.

- remote - describes the "outside" of an OpalConnection instance. As noted above, an OpalConnection instance is used to supervise/manage the signaling and media selection of a protocol. Further, it was noted that a call consists of two or more OpalConnection instances. The remote side of a H323Connection instance will refer to the person who is "over the wire", and may be on the other side of the world.

Consequently, a call which has two connections has two each of the remote and local "sides" and can be described as:

remote<=OpalPCSSConnection=>local|OPAL|local<=H323Connection=>remote.

- media streams - this abstracts the flow of media (e.g. audio or video) to and from the protocol handled by a connection. The connection will negotiate which media formats are being used and how many media streams are created. The stream then handles how the media is transferred, for example in H323Connection, a media stream would read/write to an RTP session. A second example is the PC Sound System Connection (OpalPCSSConnection) reads/writes to a sound card.

- OpalMediaPatch - the glue for linking media streams between the local sides of two connections. This class does the necessary transcoding operations to convert between the media formats that the media streams support. Further, this class takes in RTP packets, and then generates RTP packets on the output side. The input side of this class is described in Opal as the "source". The output side of this class is described in Opal as the "sink". In the examples above of a H323 voip call to a sound card, two instances of the OpalMediaPatch will be required, to transfer data in each direction between the H323Connection and OpalPCSSConnection classes.